Arkansas History: Rockefeller To Clinton And State Executions

by Talk Business & Politics staff ([email protected]) 141 views 

Last week on Talk Business & Politics, Attorney General Dustin McDaniel discussed the problems with state executions, including lethal injection, the electric chair, and even firing squads.

The death penalty has been a subject of debate in the Republican Attorney General’s race in 2014.

There hasn’t been an execution carried out in Arkansas during the tenure of Gov. Mike Beebe due to legal wranglings and a renewed national debate. In Oklahoma last week, a botched lethal injection execution sparked new controversy.

From the archives of the University of Arkansas Pryor Center for Oral and Visual History, we share this news clip from 1971 when Gov. Win Rockefeller (R) commuted the sentences of every prisoner on Arkansas’ death row and urged the governors of other states and in the future to do likewise.

Ch. 7’s David Davis reports: