Official: Ark. won't use 'cut-downs' in executions

LITTLE ROCK Executioners in Arkansas will not cut through muscle to find an inmate's veins during a difficult lethal injection procedure, a state prison official said.

A federal court affidavit by Ray Hobbs, a chief deputy director of the Arkansas Department of Correction, said members of a team conducting executions at the state's Cummins Unit would avoid using a technique known as a "cut-down." Federal public defenders said state officials used that method in past "botched" executions, a sign that judges ought to keep stays in place for death-row inmates challenging Arkansas' lethal injection procedures.

Hobbs' affidavit, filed Thursday in federal court, describes a cut-down as making a series of surgical incisions through connective tissue, fat and muscle until an area around a large vein can be found.

Cut-downs "will not be performed during any future lethal injection execution," Hobbs said. "In the event that it become necessary to make an incision for vein access during an execution, such incision would not go through the inmate's muscle tissue and would be made by a licensed physician."

In July, state prison spokeswoman Dina Tyler said executioners would consider using a cut-down only in "the most direst of circumstances."

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Death-row inmates Don William Davis, Jack Harold Jones, Terrick Nooner and Frank Williams Jr. all have been examined and found to have veins easily tapped by an intravenous line, Hobbs said. Davis, Jones and Nooner have federal stays in place as public defenders challenge the state's lethal injection protocols.

The lawyers cite several executions when witnesses either heard condemned inmates groan.

In one example, defense lawyers say the January 1992 execution of Rickey Ray Rector, 40, is an example of what could go wrong. Rector could be heard groaning off and on for almost 20 minutes before workers pulled back the curtain shielding the execution chamber.

An autopsy conducted on Rector later found 10 puncture marks where the execution team tried inserting IV lines. The report also shows executioners likely used a cut-down procedure on part of the skin from his right arm to find a vein for the IV line. Federal public defender Julie Brain did not immediately return a call for comment Thursday.

Only Williams, 42, faces a set execution date. He is scheduled to be executed Sept. 9 for the 1992 shooting death of Bradley farmer Clyde Spence.