Arkansas executed its fourth prisoner in a week late Thursday, putting an end to a frenzied schedule caused by the imminent expiration of state reserves of sedatives for lethal injection.
Kenneth Williams, 38, was originally sentenced to life in prison for the murder of a 1998 college cheerleader. She later escaped from jail and killed a man.
he is the last of the eight inmates the state planned to execute by lethal injection within 11 days during this month of April.
This schedule was due to the fact that the reserve of sedatives used in Arkansas’s lethal injection expires at the end of the month. The state faces a shortage of drugs for lethal injection in its struggle with suppliers who do not want their products to be used in executions.
Of the scheduled executions, the courts postponed four of them for various reasons.