Arkansas successfully completes two execution in one night

As reported in this AP article, Arkansas has completed the nation’s first double execution in nearly two decades.  Here are the basic details:

Arkansas has put to death inmate Marcel Williams, marking the first double execution in the United States since 2000.

Williams was pronounced dead at 10:33 p.m. Monday, 17 minutes after the procedure began at the Cummins Unit in southeast Arkansas. Inmate Jack Jones was executed earlier in the evening.

Williams was sent to death row for the 1994 rape and killing of 22-year-old Stacy Errickson, whom he’d kidnapped from a gas station in central Arkansas….

Attorneys for Marcel Williams had questioned whether the night’s first execution of Jack Jones went properly. U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker issued the stay for Williams, then, lifted it about an hour later — at 9:22 p.m….

Jones was pronounced dead at 7:20 p.m. Monday at the state’s Cummins Unit in southeast Arkansas…. Jones was sent to death row for the 1995 rape and killing of Mary Phillips.  He was also convicted of attempting to kill Phillips’ 11-year-old daughter and was convicted in another rape and killing in Florida.

UPDATE:  Bill Otis over at Crime & Consequences has this extended new post contending that the double execution in Arkansas “may be remembered as the moment the movement to abolish the death penalty started back downhill after many years of gaining ground.”