Two convicted killers in Arkansas died Monday night by lethal injection after a brief burst of legal wrangling by attorneys — one of whom claimed the earlier execution was botched.
A federal judge in Little Rock had temporarily stayed the execution of Marcel Williams after his attorneys questioned whether the execution of Jack Harold Jones went properly.
But after about an hour, U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker lifted her stay, paving the way for the 10:33 p.m. CST execution of Williams.
Williams, whose death warrant was due to expire at midnight, was pronounced dead 17 minutes after the procedure began at the Cummins Unit in southeast Arkansas.
The deaths marked the nation’s first double execution since 2000, when Texas put two condemned inmates to death on the same night.