HOUSTON (AP)- Prosecutors moved quickly Monday to set new execution dates for three death-row inmates, hours after the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a reprieve it granted last year so it could consider the constitutionality of lethal injection.
The court blocked the executions of Thomas Arthur of Alabama, Earl Wesley Berry of Mississippi and Carlton Turner of Texas last fall while it considered a challenge to Kentucky’s lethal injection procedures.
The high court ruled 7-2 last week that the procedures are not cruel, and the justices’ last-minute orders temporarily sparing the three inmates automatically expired when the justices denied their appeals Monday.
Lisa Smith, a Dallas County assistant district attorney who handles capital cases, said Monday that the execution of Turner, who was convicted of killing his parents, likely will be set for summer.
“It’s not going to be within 30 days although technically we could,” she said.
Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood said he would ask the state Supreme Court to set an execution date for Berry within 30 days.
“On a procedural matter if things go as they should, as the law says, then this one is over,” Hood said. “But in a death penalty case, never say never.”
Alabama Attorney General Troy King said the court’s ruling was expected and that his office immediately requested a new execution date for Arthur.
“It’s just a shame that Tommy Arthur continues to benefit from delays that have kept him on death row for far, far too long,” King said.
It is unclear whether they can mount new appeals to stop their executions.
The court’s decision last week left the door open to challenging lethal injection procedures in other states where problems with administering the drugs are well documented.
Roughly three dozen states use three drugs in succession to put to sleep, paralyze and kill inmates.
Critics of the procedures have said that if the first drug is administered incorrectly or in an insufficient dosage, the inmate could suffer excruciating pain from the other two drugs.
But because the second drug is a paralytic, the inmate wouldn’t be able to express discomfort.
The states sought to proceed with the executions of Arthur, Berry and Turner in spite of the high court review in the Kentucky case. The states argued that the men had used up all their appeals.
The justices provided no explanation when they blocked the executions.
Arthur received a death sentence for killing Troy Wicker, 35, in 1982. The victim’s wife, Judy Wicker, testified she had sex with Arthur and paid him $10,000 to kill her husband, who was shot in the face as he lay in bed.
Berry was sentenced to death for the 1987 murder of Mary Bounds. Bounds was beaten to death after leaving her weekly church choir practice, and her body was found just off a road.