PHOTO: Judge barred from Arkansas execution cases participates again in death-penalty protest

An Arkansas judge barred from presiding over death-penalty cases participated in a vigil marking the four executions the state carried out over two weeks last year.

Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen lay motionless on a cot Tuesday night outside the Arkansas governor's mansion while about 40 opponents of capital punishment gathered nearby.

Griffen rose from the cot shortly after 7 p.m. Asked why he participated in the protest again and whether he was concerned with the perception, he repeated the same answer twice.

"We are still killing," he said.

Griffen, who is also a Baptist minister, has sued the state's Supreme Court justices, claiming they violated his constitutional rights by imposing the ban in response to his participation on Good Friday last year in an anti-death penalty rally on the steps of the state Capitol and later in a protest at the Governor's Mansion during which lay on a cot "in solidarity" with Jesus.

Earlier that same day — on April 14, 2017 — Griffen had issued a temporary restraining order that prevented the state from using the drug vercuronium bromide in executing death-row inmates. The ruling was made in response to a lawsuit filed by the drug's manufacturer, which said the state had illegally obtained the drug.

Last week, a federal judge refused to dismiss the lawsuit against the seven justices of the Arkansas Supreme Court, but the high court itself was dismissed from the case.