LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Arkansas wrapped up an accelerated executions schedule with a lethal injection that left the condemned inmate lurching and convulsing before he died, prompting calls for investigations and renewed scrutiny of the state’s efforts to put multiple inmates to death on a compressed timeline. Kenneth Williams , 38, was scheduled to die at 7 p.m. Thursday, but the state was awaiting word from the U.S. Supreme Court on Williams' last appeals before moving forward. An Associated Press reporter who witnessed the execution said that about three minutes in, Williams’ body jerked 15 times in quick succession — lurching violently against the leather restraint across his chest — then the rate slowed for a final five movements. J.R. Davis, a spokesman for Gov. Davis, the governor’s spokesman, said later that he was sure Hutchinson would follow up “as he does with every execution,” but that the governor was confident the Department of Correction “did what it was supposed to do.”

Davis stood by his previous description of the state’s executions as “flawless.”

Dale Baich, an assistant federal public defender who witnessed a flawed 2014 Arizona execution that took two hours, said in an email early Friday that after reading media reports, “It appears from witness accounts that Mr. Williams was not fully sedated when the paralytic was administered. Williams’ attorneys released a statement calling witness accounts “horrifying” and demanding an investigation into what they called the “problematic execution.”

Arkansas had scheduled eight executions over an 11-day period before one of its lethal injection drugs expires on Sunday. Arkansas has wrapped up an aggressive execution schedule, putting to death its fourth inmate in eight days, hours after a last minute motion to halt his execution failed before the US Supreme Court. Jack Harold Jones, 52, and Marcel Wayne Williams, 46, were killed Monday night, 3 hours apart, the nation’s first double execution in 17 years. Williams was sentenced to death for the 1999 killing and robbery of Cecil Boren, 18 days after Williams escaped from prison in Lincoln County, where he was serving a life sentence for killing university cheerleader Dominique Hurd. “Unfortunately, the courts have simply refused to allow Mr. Williams to prove his intellectual disability, a disability that would prohibit his execution.”

“Tonight the rule of law was upheld as the family of Cecil Boren saw justice done,” Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge said late Thursday night. There has never been a question of guilt.”

Arkansas scheduled the executions for the final two weeks of April because its supply of midazolam, normally a surgical sedative, expires on Sunday. The Arkansas Supreme Court also denied Williams’ requests and Pulaski County Circuit Judge Mackie M. Pierce dismissed a complaint filed Thursday morning that claimed Williams’ execution could cause him unconstitutional pain and suffering because of his “unique medical conditions.” Williams suffered from sickle cell trait, lupus and organic brain damage, according to court filings. They said in the Pulaski County complaint that, like the Monday night execution of Marcel Williams, their client’s execution would cause him to “be tortured to death and endure severe pain and suffering due to his unique medical conditions and as a result of the state’s failure to humanely apply its execution protocol.”

“The state has not offered any evidence or proffered an expert witness to rebut the substantial proof that Mr. Williams is intellectually disabled,” said Shawn Nolan, whose office was appointed to represent Williams. Also Thursday, Harvard Law School's Fair Punishment Project asked to file a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of Williams' request, arguing that his claims of intellectual disability have not been fully explored. He left the prison — where the execution chamber is located in another part of the facility — less than three weeks into a life prison term for killing University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff cheerleader Dominique Hurd in 1998. At the conclusion of that trial, he had taunted the young woman’s family by turning to them after the sentence was announced and saying “You thought I was going to die, didn’t you?”

After jumping from the barrel, he sneaked along a tree line until reaching Boren’s house. He killed Boren, stole guns and Boren’s truck and then drove away to Missouri. There, he crashed into a water-delivery truck, killing the driver, Michael Greenwood. While in prison, he confessed to killing another person in 1998. At the time of Boren’s death, investigators said it did not appear Boren was targeted because of his former employment by the Arkansas Department of Correction.
Kenneth Williams is executed at the Cummins Unit, Arkansas, by injection of midazolam, marking the state's fourth execution within eight days before the drug passes its expiration date.