The Case Halting Arkansas' Executions
The Supreme Court’s 2016-17 docket has been, by recent standards, relatively sleepy. But one of its cases—an Alabama death-penalty appeal called McWilliams v. Dunn—woke up on Monday.
That’s because the issue—whether a capital defendant whose sanity or competence is at issue is entitled to an independent psychiatrist to assist with the defense—is also at stake in the cases of two Arkansas inmates, Don William Davis and Bruce Earl Ward, sentenced to death by courts in that state. The two had been scheduled to be executed Monday evening. The double executions were to be the opening act of a rapid-fire set of executions planned by Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, who issued orders to kill eight prisoners in two weeks.
On Monday, the Arkansas Supreme Court court ordered the executions stayed pending the resolution of . The
