Barring last-minute appeals, the state of Arkansas will execute three men for the Lehman murder this week. Scheduled to die by means of lethal injection are Darryl Richley, 43, Hoyt Clines, 37, and James Holmes, 37. Little-noticed in this crime-disgusted environment, it would be the first time since 1962 that a state has executed three people at once. Arkansas, no slouch in the assembly-line department, executed two men just this past May, the first multiple execution since capital punishment was resumed in 1977. Multiple executions are seen as good for security; they even save a few dollars, what with the doctors and other staffers being around at one time. “I look forward to it,” Richley told Newsweek last week in a prison interview. “I’m getting out of here.”
While some legal issues, like the question of a hypnotized witness, have trailed this case, prison officials last week concentrated on execution protocol. Based on their assigned prisoner numbers, Clines would be executed first, followed by Holmes and Richley. Richley and Clines quickly opted for injection over the electric chair, while Holmes, who has a phobia about needles, needed time to think about it. He finally decided the chair was even worse and selected injection. The executions are scheduled to take place in the death house at Cummins, Ark. Each prisoner is strapped to a gurney and a needle is placed in each arm – one for backup. Their bodies are released to the state medical examiner, who is required to perform an autopsy. After all, legally it is “a homicide,” says deputy warden Tom Pitts.
Multiple executions were no big deal until the 1930s. (Actually, the largest on one day was in 1862 in Minnesota, when 38 Sioux Indians, convicted of rebellion, were hanged.) But the bulk method slowed in the 1930s, when states began substituting the gas chamber for electrocution or hanging. It seems that prison officials had to let the chamber air out for some time before sending another miscreant in. These days, death-penalty advocates would love to whittle down the nearly 3,000 people on death row in large chunks, but that is not going to happen. In fact, the pace of executions this year is running behind last year’s 38. Still, a coalition of anti-death-penalty groups said the triple execution “turns back the clock to a time when mass lynchings were the law of the land.”
The legal history of the Lehman case was tortuous – and again raised questions about whether the death penalty can be applied fairly. Defense lawyers discovered that prosecutors, without disclosing it at the trial, had hired an entertainer to hypnotize Vickie Lehman, who then gave statements more detailed than her original responses to police. After a series of appeals, the Eighth Circuit determined that any prosecutorial misconduct that occurred wasn’t critical because Vickie’s hypnotic statements weren’t all that different – except in the case of a fourth defendant, Michael Orndorff. Those statements painted Orndorff as cavorting in the house while her father was dying, a picture that might have influenced the jury to impose the death sentence. The court ordered a new sentencing hearing but the state settled for life without parole for Orndorff, in part, it said, to spare the family.
To Clines, excluding Orndorff is proof that the death penalty is administered arbitrarily. “They’re getting ready to execute an innocent man,” he told Newsweek. “I’ve never denied being there. But I didn’t kill anybody. I didn’t even have a weapon.” (Under the law, a participant at a felony where someone is killed can face the death penalty.) Clines expressed deep remorse before the clemency board last week. “I’m sorry this had to happen,” he said. “I wish I could take it back, but I can’t.”
Lehman’s family has never recovered. To Donette West, one of Lehman’s daughters, the Orndorff case is proof that the state should execute the three other men before they “slip through the system.” At the clemency hearing, a one-sentence statement by Lehman’s mother, Thelma, 86, was read: “I hope they kill the durn devils.” Vickie Lehman told the clemency board she is still single at 37 because she has never found a man to measure up to her father. His last words to her, she said, were whether she had heard the doorbell ring.
