The state of Arkansas on Thursday held the execution [materials] of Ledell Lee, the first in the state in 11 years. The sentence was carried out following the denial [text, PDF] earlier that day by the US Supreme Court [official website] of a petition to stay the execution. The court also denied petitions and the writ of certiorari [text, PDF] filed on behalf of Lee and seven other death row inmates. Lee is the first of eight Arkansas inmates awaiting executions who was put to death as part of the state’s original plan to execute all eight within a span of 11 days [Reuters report]. The 11-day execution timetable prompted severe backlash from inmates’ lawyers and advocacy groups who termed the plan as “an unseemly rush that offended standards of decency.” While Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge [official website] released a statement [text] characterizing the execution as bringing closure to Reese’s family, Lee had consistently maintained his innocence for years and was seeking DNA tests to prove the same.

Last week Judge Kristine Baker of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas [official website] issued a temporary injunction [JURIST report] blocking Arkansas’ plan to execute seven of the inmates by the end of the month. Two days earlier Amnesty International [advocacy website] released a statement [JURIST report] calling for Arkansas to halt the execution of the eight death row prisoners. Death penalty has been a highly divisive and controversial national issue in the past few decades. AI’s annual report [PDF], released earlier this month, revealed the US to be the only executioner in the 35 members of the Organization of American States. In 2002, the US Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia [Opinion, text], that the execution of the “mentally retarded” is excessive under the Eighth Amendment and the Constitution “places a substantive restriction on the State’s power to take the life” of such offender. In March the Mississippi House of Representatives approved a bill [JURIST report] allowing firing squad executions. In January, a judge blocked [JURIST report] Ohio’s lethal injection protocol by deeming it unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment. That same month, the US Supreme Court refused to consider [JURIST report] a challenge to Alabama’s death penalty system. In February the Supreme Court ruled [JURIST report] in favor of a death row inmate seeking a new sentencing hearing based on racial bias caused by his ineffective counsel.