An Arkansas judge who barred the state from hurriedly executing eight inmates attended a death-penalty rally just hours later — even posing as a condemned man as part of the protest.
Soon after Friday’s ruling, Judge Wendell Griffen attended the rally outside the Governor’s Mansion, where he lay tied to a cot as other protesters held anti-death- penalty signs behind him.
Griffen’s participation in the rally sparked outrage among death-penalty supporters.
Republican lawmakers condemned the display as judicial misconduct, and called for his removal from the bench.
But Griffen, a circuit judge in Pulaski County, defended his participation.
“We have never, in my knowledge, been so afraid to admit that people can have personal beliefs yet can follow the law, even when to follow the law means they must place their personal feelings aside,” the judge told The Associated Press Saturday.
Right before participating in the rally, Griffen had granted a restraining order preventing Arkansas from using its supply of vecuronium bromide in order to execute six convicted criminals over the last 11 days of April.
State Attorney General Leslie Rutledge on Saturday cited Griffen’s participation in the rally in asking Saturday that the state’s highest court vacate the ruling.
“This court should put a stop to the games being played by a judge who is obviously unable to preside over this case impartially,” Rutledge wrote.
Lawmakers have suggested the move may be grounds for the Arkansas House to begin impeachment proceedings against Griffen.
The judge’s ruling was one of two judicial decisions delaying the executions, which were being scheduled in time to avoid the expiration of another lethal injection drug used by Arkansas, midazolam.
The back-to-back decisions upend what had initially been a plan to execute eight men in four double executions, starting Monday night, because the state’s supply of midazolam expires at the end of the month.
With Post wires