A murderer used his final words to beg for forgiveness before being given the lethal injection at an Arkansas prison.
Kenneth Williams, 38, was sentenced to death for killing two people after escaping from prison, where he was serving a life sentence for a previous murder.
Williams was responsible for the deaths of four people in total. He killed Missouri resident Michael Greenwood in a car accident while fleeing authorities after Cecil Boren’s 1999 slaying. Williams escaped prison and killed Boren during a life sentence without parole for the 1998 murder of the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff student Dominique Hurd. He later confessed to murdering Jerrell Jenkins the same day he killed Hurd.
Before being executed, an Arkansas inmate issued some surprising final words.
In a statement read out while he was in the death chamber, he said:
“I extend my sincerest of apologies to the families I have senselessly wronged and deprived of their loved ones. I was more than wrong. The crimes I perpetrated against you all was senseless, extremely hurtful and inexcusable.”
Williams had a massive final meal including fried chicken, barbecue beans, rice, corn, stewed tomatoes, and four slices of bread, as well as two cinnamon rolls, two cookies, and fruit punch. He also for a Holy Communion to take place.
He took 13 minutes to die, according to local media reports, and convulsed around 20 times. NBC News reported the ‘horrifying execution’, which saw Williams ‘coughing, convulsing, lurching and jerking’.
Williams was one of four inmates executed within eight days in Arkansas, in so-called conveyor-belt executions. Two executions were halted in the state after eight inmates were scheduled to be executed in just 11 days. Arkansas had not held an execution for 12 years prior to this.
The state had decided on a sped-up schedule after it was found that one of the drugs in its lethal injection, a sedative called midazolam, expires at the end of April.
Critics said rushing the executions was reckless and against the constitution. Williams was the last of the four inmates in the ‘conveyor belt’ to be put to death.
Watch the video below for more details:
Sources: OpposingViews, CNN, NBC News
Why is it that the left constantly fights for the life of convicted murderers but have no problem killing innocent living babies? Communism at its best!