Arkansas plans fourth execution in about
a week
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[April 27, 2017]
(Reuters) - Arkansas plans to end
its series of April executions by putting to death on Thursday an inmate
convicted of murdering a cheerleader and who escaped from prison and
killed two other people before being captured again.
Arkansas, which had not held an execution in 12 years until this month,
has put three inmates to death since April 20. It plans to execute
Kenneth Williams, 38, by lethal injection at 7 p.m. CDT at its death
chamber in its Cummins Unit prison.
Arkansas originally had planned to execute eight inmates in 11 days in
April, the most of any state in as short a period since the death
penalty was reinstated in 1976. Four of the executions were put on hold
by courts due to mental competency issues for two inmates, to consider a
clemency recommendation by a state board for another, and for DNA
testing for one inmate who has maintained his innocence.
The unprecedented schedule, set because one of the drugs in the state's
execution mix expires at the end of April, prompted criticism that
Arkansas was acting recklessly. It also set off a series of legal
filings that raised questions about U.S. death chamber protocols,
troubled prosecutions and difficulties in obtaining lethal injection
drugs.
Williams was transferred to the Cummins Unit on Wednesday, the same day
the Arkansas Supreme Court denied a request from his lawyers to halt the
execution.
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They argued there were problems with jury proceedings, that Williams is
intellectually disabled and should be spared, and that he was convicted
of capital murder without a unanimous verdict on the charge that made
him eligible for the death penalty.
"We've been waiting a long, long time for this," Genie Boren, the widow
of one of the murder victims, was quoted as saying by local TV
broadcaster Fox 16.
Williams, sentenced to life without parole for the 1998 murder of
19-year-old college cheerleader Dominique Hurd, broke out of a
maximum-security prison in 1999.
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![](../images/042717pics/news_b5.jpg)
Inmate Kenneth Williams is shown in this booking photo provided
March 21, 2017. Williams is scheduled to be executed in Arkansas,
April 27, 2017. Courtesy Arkansas Department of Corrections/Handout
via REUTERS
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He murdered Cecil Boren, 57 at his farmhouse, shooting him multiple
times. Williams then stole Boren's pickup truck and fled to
Missouri, where he slammed his vehicle into one driven by delivery
man Michael Greenwood, 24, killing him.
In 2005, Williams sent a letter to a local Arkansas paper where he
confessed to killing Jerrell Jenkins on the same day as the
cheerleader.
Williams was sentenced to death for Boren's murder.
(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas, and Steve Barnes in
Little Rock; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
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