Gov. Asa Hutchinson has set the execution date for death-row inmate Jack Gordon Greene, his office announced Friday.
The governor set Greene's lethal injection for Nov. 9, Hutchinson spokesman J.R. Davis said in an email.
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.
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Attorney General Leslie Rutledge told the Governor on Aug. 17 that Greene had exhausted his appeals and requested an execution date be set.
On the same day, prisons spokesman Solomon Graves said the state had acquired a drug, midazolam, to carry out further lethal injections. Midazolam is one of the drugs used in the state’s lethal three-drug cocktail.
The announcement came after an aggressive spate of executions in April. As the state’s supply of midazolam was set to expire, Hutchinson scheduled eight lethal injections over 11 days. Four executions were carried out, and court rulings blocking the other four.
Graves previously declined to disclose who sold the state its newest supply of midazolam. Arkansas law allows the Department of Correction to keep secret the suppliers of lethal injection drugs.
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 earlier this month.
Check back for updates and read Saturday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.
Online reporter Brandon Riddle contributed to this story. A previous version of this story misstated the name of Hutchinson's spokesman.