Arkansas’ candidates for governor ignore warning from botched execution

Given how much law-and-order rhetoric has become standard GOP talking points in Arkansas, it’s surprising that the state’s most outspoken opponent of the death penalty was also its first Republican governor after Reconstruction.

One of the last acts Winthrop Rockefeller performed as Arkansas governor was his 1970 decision to commute the death sentences of 15 men awaiting execution. It was a controversial move for the Southern state but not altogether surprising. Rockefeller had talked before about his opposition to capital punishment.

“We ourselves admit to failure when the only way we can cope with the problem is taking another man’s life,” Rockefeller said in 1966.

Rockefeller’s radical act belongs to a bygone era. That much was clear after watching the debate for Arkansas governor.

A botched lethal injection in neighboring Tennessee should have prompted a serious discussion about capital punishment. 

The three candidates for Arkansas’ top office instead are embracing the death penalty, with at least one candidate proposing expanding the methods used.

“I’m for the death penalty, and I’m for the firing squad, and hopefully we can get some things solved around here in Arkansas,” Libertarian candidate Colt Shelby said.

Shelby’s answer came in response to a question about Christa Pike, the Tennessee death row inmate whose execution was halted after two failed rounds of lethal injection drugs. 

The execution, the latest in a long line of botched lethal injections around the country, has reignited the debate over the death penalty and prompted Tennessee’s governor to pause executions through the end of the year.

But the case appeared to give little pause for Shelby, Democratic state Sen. Fred Love and Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders as they debated on Arkansas public television last week.

Sanders cited the law she signed last year allowing the use of nitrogen gas to put inmates to death, saying she’ll judge each case individually.

“I believe in justice for the victims,” Sanders said. “I think it’s one of the most difficult, challenging things that any governor can face.”

Love, who voted against the nitrogen executions bill and legislation that kept manufacturers of the state’s lethal injection drugs a secret, signaled a change of heart.

“In the past, I have actually leaned to not being for the death penalty, but as governor, I will take each case by case, and actually judge each case because I know that justice needs to be served,” he said.

The candidates’ openness for the death penalty comes as support for capital punishment has been at record lows nationally.

It occurs as President Donald Trump abandoned the Pentagon’s plan to livestream the firing squad execution of the Fort Hood shooter after the idea drew bipartisan backlash.

It’s also the latest chapter in Arkansas’ checkered political history surrounding the death penalty.

In 1992, then-Gov. Bill Clinton left the presidential campaign trail to return to Arkansas for the execution of Ricky Ray Rector. The move was widely viewed as an attempt to raise his national profile and prove himself as someone who was tough on crime. 

Former Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s plan to carry out eight executions over a two-week period drew widespread condemnation from human rights advocates. The executions — whittled down to four after half of them were blocked by the courts — were scheduled to take place before the state’s supply of a lethal injection drug expired.

It’s probably unrealistic to expect candidates in a state as conservative as Arkansas to abandon capital punishment. The year of Arkansas’ execution spree, the University of Arkansas’ Arkansas Poll found that nearly three-fourths of very likely voters still supported the death penalty.

But it’s not unrealistic to expect candidates to offer more details on why they think it’s an effective option, despite experts who say it’s not a deterrent, and what steps they’d take to ensure Arkansas doesn’t have botched executions similar to Tennessee’s.

At the very least, voters should hear the answer candidates would give to the question Rockefeller asked himself when he announced the commutations:

“What earthly mortal has the omnipotence to say who among us shall live and who shall die?”