Ray Hobbs

Summary

The court reversed the circuit court’s ruling that Act 139 violated Arkansas’s separation-of-powers doctrine, holding that the statute provides reasonable legislative guidelines for the ADC’s implementation of lethal injection. It affirmed the ruling that Act 139 is not a sentencing statute and therefore may govern executions conducted after its enactment without violating anti-retroactivity principles. Justice Wynne, joined by the Chief Justice and Justice Danielson, concurred in part and dissented in part, agreeing on retroactivity but concluding that Act 139 still unlawfully delegates fundamental execution-method decisions to the ADC.