Ray Hobbs

Summary

The court held that Arkansas’s Method of Execution Act unconstitutionally delegated to the Department of Correction unrestricted discretion to select lethal-injection chemicals and procedures, violating separation of powers. It further held that the statute was not severable and that the circuit court’s deletion of language from the statute had no practical legal effect. The court agreed that claims concerning chemicals obtained from a particular foreign supplier were moot because those chemicals had been destroyed, but reversed the related injunction as improper. Justice Baker, joined by Special Justice Byron Freeland, dissented, concluding that the statute supplied sufficient general guidance and did not violate separation of powers.