USA - Arkansas. State Attorney General Leslie Rutledge today requested dates for eight death-row inmates

State Attorney General Leslie Rutledge today requested that Gov. Asa Hutchinson set execution dates for eight death-row inmates who have exhausted all of their appeals. The requests come after the Arkansas Department of Correction recently purchased lethal injection drugs to carry out executions after a 10-year hiatus. The eight inmates are the only ones of the 34 on death row who have exhausted all their legal appeals. They are Bruce Ward, 58; Don Davis, 52; Terrick Nooner, 44; Stacey Johnson, 45; Jack Jones Jr., 51; Marcell Williams, 44; Jason McGehee, 39; and Kenneth D. Williams, 36. Legal challenges to the state's death-penalty procedures put executions on hold since the last one in November 2005. Eric Nance was executed with a three-drug cocktail. In June, the Correction Department purchased vials of potassium chloride, vecuronium bromide and midazolam for a total of $24,226.40. The department redacted the name and address of the supplier on an invoice obtained by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act. Passed in April, Arkansas Act 1096 shields the state from disclosing any information that may identify the source of execution drugs. The eight inmates as well as inmate Ledell Lee filed a lawsuit in Pulaski County on June 25 against the Correction Department and its director, Wendy Kelley, seeking a permanent injunction against executions. They are demanding that the Correction Department reveal its source when purchasing execution drugs. To settle a previous lawsuit by the same inmates, the Correction Department agreed in 2013 to reveal the source of any future execution drugs. The Correction Department said in recent court documents that the passage of Arkansas Act 1096 prohibits the release of the information. The inmates' lead attorney, Jeff Rosenzweig, said he and his associates were in the process Tuesday of notifying their clients of the attorney general's requests. Rosenzweig said Tuesday that when the dates of execution are set, he will immediately file a request that the executions should be delayed until the suit is settled. "These executions have been held up several years because of contradictions over the method of executions," Rosenzweig said. "The question here is whether the Legislature can abrogate the contract that the attorney general's office made two years ago on behalf of the Correction Department to reveal the sources of the drugs." According to the Correction Department's latest lethal injection procedures -- finalized on Aug. 6 -- midazolam will be the first agent administered, followed by vecuronium bromide, potassium chloride and finally saline solution. Arkansas Act 1096 requires that the execution drugs be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, made by a federally approved manufacturer and made from a facility registered with the federal agency. The law provides for another option of obtaining the drug from a compounding pharmacy that has been accredited by a national accrediting organization. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Correction Department spokesman Cathy Frye said that the department could not provide written documentation that the drugs obtained met the law's requirement. "However, we can confirm that an employee of the Arkansas Department of Correction verified that the drugs are approved by the FDA," she said. Frye added that an employee can also verify that the drugs were made by a federally approved manufacturer and obtained from a facility registered with the Food and Drug Administration. "None of the drugs came from a compounding pharmacy. We therefore have no records responsive to your request," Frye said. The Correction Department supplied photographs of the drug vials and the expiration dates. The vecuronium bromide expires June 2016; the midazolam expires April 2017; and the potassium chloride expires June 2017. When the Democrat-Gazette requested access to reports from an independent testing laboratory for the purity of the drug, Frye said "We have no records responsive to this request." Frye said Tuesday that the Correction Department is not commenting on the attorney general's request for execution dates because "we do not play a role in that process."