The Arkansas attorney general's office on Friday sought to transfer an inmate lawsuit challenging the legality of a new execution law from Pulaski County Circuit Court to federal court.
The "removal" request was assigned to U.S. District Judge James Moody Jr., who has been on the federal bench in Little Rock for a little over a year after spending 11 years as a Pulaski County circuit judge.
In the lawsuit, seven death-row inmates, led by Marcel Wayne Williams, contend the new law, signed Monday by Gov. Asa Hutchinson, violates a 2013 contract that the attorney general, on behalf of the state, made with the inmates. Jeff Rosenzweig, one of the attorneys who filed the suit on behalf of the inmates, said the state promised to provide the source and content of the drugs it plans to use in executions. In return, the inmates withdrew parts of a previous lawsuit.
The new law, Act 1096 of 2015, keeps the source of the execution drugs a secret and "blatantly reneges" on the 2013 agreement, Rosenzweig said.
The plaintiffs contend a judge should order the state to disclose where it gets the execution drugs and strike down the new law. They also want a judge to reinstate the freeze on capital punishment that the state Supreme Court lifted in March.
In Pulaski County Circuit Court, the case was assigned to Judge Wendell Griffen, who last year ruled that a 2013 version of the law was unconstitutional because it gave the state Department of Correction too much authority to decide which drugs will be used and who will administer them.
The Supreme Court reversed Griffen on March 19, saying legislators can delegate some of their authority to a state agency as long as they set "reasonable guidelines" that "include appropriate standards."
Griffen's Feb. 21, 2014, ruling that the Supreme Court overturned had put lethal injections on hold across the state. Legal challenges to the state's death-penalty procedures have kept the state from executing anyone since 2005.
In court documents filed Friday, Assistant Attorney General Jennifer L. Merritt noted that the death-row inmates argue in the suit that Act 1096 "violates seven different federal constitutional or statutory provisions," as well as asserting claims under the Arkansas constitution and a state-law separation of powers claim.
Merritt argued that the suit should be transferred to federal court because federal courts have original jurisdiction over civil actions arising under federal law, and also have supplemental jurisdiction over state-law claims, because they are so similar to the federal claims.
Metro on 04/11/2015