[JURIST] US District Court Judge Kristine Baker [official profile] on Saturday issued a temporary injunction [text, PDF] blocking Arkansas’ plan to execute seven inmates by the end of the month. Baker’s order comes a day after Arkansas state judge Wendell Griffen issued a broad temporary restraining order [text] in favor of the prisoners. The plan was to begin executions on Monday, before the state’s supply of midazolam, a drug used in the executions, expired at the end of the month. Midazolam is not the only drug facing criticism, however, as the McKesson Corporation has sought return [press release] of the drug vecuronium bromide, one of its drugs used in the process.

Earlier this week Amnesty International released a statement [JURIST report] calling for Arkansas to halt the execution of then eight death row prisoners. AI’s annual report [text, PDF], released earlier this month, revealed the US to not be among the world’s top five executioners since 2006. In 2002, the US Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia [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 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.