Republican AG Candidates Debate At Little Rock Law School

Abortion, gun laws and the death penalty were the primary topics of a 90-minute debate at the UALR Law School on Wednesday night.

The event was sponsored by the Advance Arkansas Institute and the three GOP candidates for the state’s top legal post – Patricia Nation, Leslie Rutledge and David Sterling – all participated.

John Lyon with our content partner, the Arkansas News Bureau, reports:

All three candidates said they support the death penalty. Sterling, a former assistant city manager in Hope, said that if he is elected, he will propose changing state law to allow the use of pentobarbital in lethal injections.

“Until we get that going, under Arkansas law we will use the electric chair,” he said.

Rutledge, a former deputy prosecutor, said she would work to ensure that Arkansas can obtain drugs for lethal injections.

“What I will not do is offer irresponsible rhetoric to bring back the electric chair. The electric chair is in a museum, and that’s where it belongs,” she said.

Nation, a civil rights lawyer, said she would look to see how other states have been able to carry out lethal injections.

“As attorney general, that would be a No. 1 priority for me, to make decisions about which drug protocol we need to use,” she said.

You can read the full report at this link.