In 1995, Mr. Jones raped, beat and strangled Mary Phillips, who was 34, and beat and choked her daughter, Lacey, who was 11 at the time, to unconsciousness, but the girl survived. He has admitted guilt and said repeatedly that he did not want clemency.
Mr. Williams, 46, kidnapped, robbed, raped and strangled Stacy Errickson in 1994, and has also admitted hi
VARNER, Ark. ? Arkansas executed two convicted murderers on Monday night, the first time in almost 17 years that any state has executed two inmates on the same day, as the state carries out a series of capital punishments before one of its lethal injection drugs expires.
Jack H. Jones Jr. died at 7:20 p.m. local time, and Marcel Williams at 10:33 p.m., both from the injection of a three-drug combination, after a flurry of failed, last-ditch appeals. The executions in the death chamber at the Cummings Unit, a state prison southwest of Pine Bluff, came four days after the state put to death another killer, Ledell Lee. A fourth condemned man, Kenneth Williams, is scheduled to be executed on Thursday.
On Monday, the courts rejected a series of appeals by Mr. Jones and Mr. Williams, including an effort minutes before Mr. Williams?s execution, arguing it would be unconstitutionally cruel, based on complications Mr. Jones might have experienced. In a court filing, Mr. Williams?s lawyers wrote that infirmary workers had tried unsuccessfully to insert a central line in Mr. Jones?s neck for 45 minutes, before placing it elsewhere on his body. Then Mr. Jones gulped for air during the execution, the filing said, ?evidence of continued consciousness.?
Judge Kristine G. Baker of United States District Court in Little Rock, Ark., issued a temporary stay but ultimately rejected Mr. Williams?s claim, allowing his execution to proceed.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/u...xecutions.html