LITTLE ROCK — Correction officials and the attorney general’s office are trying to figure out how to rework Arkansas’ lethal injection law after the state’s top court threw the statute out earlier this year.
Deputy Attorney General Dennis Hansen told lawmakers Tuesday that a new lethal injection statute will need to be adopted in the coming legislative session, which begins Jan. 14.
Hansen and the Department of Correction director addressed the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday after the Arkansas Supreme Court in June sided with death row inmates who said a 2009 execution law violated part of the state’s constitution about separating the branches of government.
That law said death sentences are to be carried out by lethal injection of one or more chemicals that the director of the Department of Correction chooses.