LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) – Arkansas’ chief medical examiner says nothing in autopsy reports suggest that four inmates put to death in April suffered while they died. But that won’t end the debate over whether the state’s three-drug execution is cruel.
The state’s chief medical examiner, Dr. Charles Kokes, said in an interview with The Associated Press last week there was nothing in the autopsies’ lab reports or from witnesses’ accounts to indicate anything went awry during executions of Ledell Lee, Jack Jones Jr., Marcel Williams and Kenneth Williams.
“We’re just looking at a number” on the lab report, Kokes said. “What’s probably more important is what people who were there witnessed.”
Journalists who served as pool reporters said some of the inmates breathed heavily as they died, and Kenneth Williams’ movements were described as “lurching, jerking, convulsing and coughing.” Kokes said these accounts described typical death throes.
Lab work on the inmates’ bodies looked only for the sedative, midazolam, not the other two drugs, vecuronium bromide, which is meant to paralyze the inmate’s lungs, and potassium chloride, which is meant to stop their hearts.