Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen on Tuesday dismissed [opinion] a complaint from eight individuals scheduled for executions in Arkansas next month. Griffen granted the state’s motion to dismiss the amended complaint, finding that he had no jurisdiction over the matter after the state’s Supreme Court reversed his previous ruling [JURIST report]. Griffen wrote:

As such, it is more than troubling, and more than shameful. It amounts to theft of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution of this state and the Constitution of the United States to a trial. To think that the highest court in Arkansas would compel every other court in Arkansas to steal the last right condemned persons have to challenge the constitutionality of their execution illustrates the travesty of justice, and the damnable unfairness, this Court is powerless to prevent.

The inmates have also filed a federal lawsuit [JURIST report].

The death penalty continues to be a point of contention across the US. The US Supreme Court ruled [JURIST report] Tuesday that the factors considered by Texas in determining a defendant was not intellectually disabled do not comport with the Eighth Amendment or court precedent. Last month the Mississippi house approved a bill [JURIST report] allowing firing squad executions. In January Ohio’s lethal injection protocol was deemed [JURIST report] unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment. In November the legal status of the death penalty was upheld [JURIST report] by state referendum in Oklahoma, Nebraska and California. In September executions in Oklahoma were put on a two-year hiatus so Oklahoma can reevaluate its lethal injection procedures [JURIST report] following a botched execution and several drug mix-ups in the past two years.