Court lifts execution stay for Arkansas convict (UALR Public Radio) - A federal appeals court has lifted a stay blocking the execution of an Arkansas death-row inmate, but another prisoner's challenge before the state Supreme Court could delay the sentence from being carried out.

The decision by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis eliminated a legal barrier protecting Jack Harold Jones Jr. from lethal injection. Jones was sentenced for a capital murder conviction in the 1995 death of a Bald Knob woman and attack on the woman's daughter.

The ruling last month comes as the Arkansas Supreme Court plans to hear a challenge by lawyers representing death-row inmate Frank Williams Jr. that the state's new lethal-injection protocol cannot be implemented without public review.

Jeff Rosenzweig, a Little Rock lawyer representing Jones, said the Williams' lawsuit likely is the only thing stopping his client from being executed. Rosenzweig said he didn't know if the state would try to press for the execution anyway or if he would file to make his client a part of Williams' lawsuit. Jones has run out of other court challenges.

Jones won the stay last year as he and other inmates challenged the state's use of a lethal drug cocktail similar to one used in Kentucky and challenged by prisoners in that state. The U.S. Supreme Court in April found the Kentucky method constitutional.

U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright then dismissed the Arkansas inmates' suit and the state attorney general's office asked the 8th Circuit to void the stay in Jones' case.

Gabe Holmstrom, a spokesman for Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, said Monday that state lawyers have not yet decided whether they will ask the governor to set an execution date for Jones or will wait for the Arkansas Supreme Court to rule in the Williams' case.

Matt DeCample, a spokesman for Gov. Mike Beebe, declined to say whether Beebe would sign a death warrant for Jones while Williams' challenge was pending before the state Supreme Court.

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