LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — The Arkansas Supreme Court on Thursday said it won’t reconsider its ruling rejecting a death row inmate’s request for new DNA testing of evidence that his attorneys say could exonerate him.
In a 5-2 decision, justices rejected Stacey Johnson’s petition for rehearing over the court’s decision last year that he wasn’t entitled to the additional testing of evidence from the 1993 killing of Carol Heath.
Johnson was one of eight inmates Arkansas sought to execute over an 11-day period in 2017 before its supply of a lethal injection drug expired. Johnson and three other inmates were spared by the courts and Arkansas ultimately put the other four men to death.
Arkansas doesn’t have any executions scheduled, but Attorney General Leslie Rutledge in December said the court’s ruling cleared the way for Johnson’s. Arkansas doesn’t currently have any execution drugs.
