New batch of lethal-injection drug acquired; execution date sought for Arkansas death-row inmate

Jack Greene
Jack Greene

A spokesman for Arkansas' governor says he plans to set an execution date for a death-row inmate after the attorney general requested it and the prisons department confirmed the state has acquired a new batch of a needed lethal-injection drug.

In a letter Thursday to Gov. Asa Hutchinson, Leslie Rutledge asked that the death sentence be carried out for 62-year-old Jack Gordon Greene.

Hutchinson's spokesman, J.R. Davis, said by phone that evening that the governor will schedule Greene's execution. A time frame has not been announced.

Also Thursday, a spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Correction told an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reporter that the state acquired a new supply of midazolam — one of three drugs needed to complete executions, per state protocol — on Aug. 4. No stay of execution is in place regarding Greene’s conviction.

Greene was convicted in the July 1991 death of Sidney Burnett, 69, of Knoxville, who was found bound and gagged, beaten with a can of hominy, and stabbed twice, the Democrat-Gazette previously reported. The retired minister also had his throat slit.

The killer had reportedly met Burnett and his family several years before at their outreach mission in Lamar, which is about 4.5 miles north and west of Knoxville in Johnson County.

Records show Greene also received a life sentence in North Carolina in the slaying of his brother, 45-year-old Turner "Tommy" Greene of Wilkesboro, N.C., and the abduction of his then-15-year-old niece, Angela Dawn Blankenship of Purlear, N.C.

Greene arrived in Arkansas three days after his brother's killing.

Greene's attorneys argue that the convicted killer is severely mentally ill, saying he suffers from a fixed delusion that prison officials are conspiring with his attorneys to cover up injuries he believes corrections officers have inflicted on him.

"Capital punishment should not be used on vulnerable people like the severely mentally ill," John C. Williams, an assistant federal defender representing Greene, said in a statement to The Associated Press. "We hope Governor Hutchinson will refrain from setting an execution date for Mr. Greene since he is not competent for execution."

Thursday’s request comes months after the state carried out the executions of four death-row inmates by lethal injection. Eight executions had been planned over an 11-day period in April.

The state scheduled the executions to occur before its supply of midazolam expired.

Department of Correction Spokesman Solomon Graves told the AP on Thursday that the state's new supply expires in January 2019.

Read Friday’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.

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Information for this article was contributed by The Associated Press and John Moritz of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

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