The Intercept: ARKANSAS PLANS TO EXECUTE SEVEN PEOPLE THIS MONTH, CONTINUING LONG TRADITION OF ASSEMBLY-LINE KILLING

"ON APRIL 17, the state of Arkansas plans to kill Don Davis and Bruce Earl Ward, two men who have been on death row since the early 1990s. Neither has applied for clemency. Both will die on the same gurney, back to back, if all goes according to plan. Executioners will start by injecting them with a sedative called midazolam, never before used by the state, but which is supposed to render them unconscious for the two lethal drugs to follow. No one, apart from a handful of officials, knows where the drugs will come from, or who exactly will do the injecting. Those are secrets under the law. Most importantly, no one knows how well the midazolam will work, if it works at all. After nearly 12 years without a single execution, Arkansas is embarking on a kind of human experiment.

"If there are risks to this plan, Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchison has wasted little time contemplating them. Three nights after the double execution, Ledelle Lee and Stacey Johnson are scheduled to die the same way, on April 20, followed by another two men, Marcel Williams and Jack Jones Jr., on April 24. Finally, if all goes according to plan, Kenneth Williams will be executed on the 27th. An eighth man, Jason McGehee, was supposed to die with him, but this week he was granted a reprieve. As it now stands, seven men will die in the Arkansas death house this month, over the course of 11 days."

The Grim Rituals of Capital Punishment
BY NICHOLAS HUNE-BROWN

As of 2017, in Europe, the death penalty for peacetime crimes has been abolished in all countries except Belarus, while the death penalty for wartime crimes has been abolished in all countries except Belarus and Kazakhstan.

"Over the years, capital punishment has gained and lost support around the world as countries have developed new laws to retain the death penalty for certain crimes, approve it in exceptional circumstances or have abolished it altogether. Out of those 58 countries that still uphold the death penalty, 527 people were executed in 23 countries in 2010."

Here are 10 countries that still embrace capital punishment:

China. China carries out the most executions than any other country in the world;
The United States. The United States has one of the highest numbers of executions each year;
Pakistan;
Iran;
North Korea;
Saudi Arabia;
Yemen;
Indonesia;
Bangladesh;
Iraq.