ON HOLD

Arkansas Court Blocks Lethal Injections

Gives one inmate chance to prove innocence with DNA.

In two Wednesday night rulings, the Arkansas Supreme Court temporarily blocked plans to execute multiple inmates. In the first ruling, the court ordered a stay of execution for one of two inmates scheduled to be executed Thursday, on the grounds that one may be able to prove his innocence through DNA evidence. That inmate, Stacey Johnson, says he is innocent of a 1993 murder, and that advanced DNA testing will exonerate him. In another ruling just moments later, the same court ruled that Arkansas may not use lethal-injection drugs supplied by the McKesson Corp., a pharmaceutical company that claims the state misled it on how its drugs would be used. McKesson supplies one of drugs that are required by Arkansas’s execution protocol.