Governor Asa Hutchinson has set an execution date for Jack Greene for November 9th. He was found guilty in the 1991 murder of Sidney Burnett. Attorney General Leslie Rutledge requested on August 17th that Hutchinson set a date.
It followed state confirmation earlier this month that a new supply of midazolam had been secured for the three-drug lethal injection procedure. Arkansas law allows the state to keep its source of drugs a state secret.
Arkansas executed four men in April before a drug expired. It originally intended to execute eight in 11 days but couldn't due to court intervention.
Greene's attorney, Assistant Federal Defender Scott Braden says the state is unconstituionally trying to kill a man with a severe mental illness.
“The State has taken the next step toward executing a man who suffers from severe mental illness. Mr. Greene has long held a fixed delusion that the Arkansas Department of Correction is conspiring with his attorneys to cover up injuries that he believes corrections officers have inflicted upon him. He complains that his spinal cord has been removed and his central nervous system has been destroyed. He believes he will be executed to cover up what he calls these ‘crimes against humanity.’
“In the coming weeks, it’s imperative that the appropriate decision makers consider whether the State should execute a man in such a feeble mental state. The U.S. Supreme Court has been clear that the Eighth Amendment prohibits the execution of someone who cannot rationally comprehend his execution. Two-and-a-half decades of solitary confinement—piled on top of Mr. Greene’s existing mental fragility—call the legality of Mr. Greene’s execution into serious doubt.”
Arkansas Public Media previously reported Greene has murdered others as well.
The attorney general says Greene's case is one that has done circles in the courts and currently has no legal stays or obstacles to execution. According to her letter, Greene has thrice been sentenced to death by a jury. He is convicted of murder in North Carolina and Arkansas. In 1991, Greene bound and gagged and shot dead preacher Sidney Jethro Burnett, 69, in his home in Johnson County on July 23, this after killing his brother, Turner "Tommy" Greene, 45, earlier that month.
This story has been and will be updated.
