Desperate Arkansas death row prisoner begs to be states first execution since 2017, while 10 others sue to block contested punishment
A death row prisoner in Arkansas is begging the state to kill him, but his death wish is being stalled by a lawsuit from 10 other inmates trying to stop a highly controversial execution method.Scotty Gardner, 60, has been on death row since his speedy conviction in 2018 for strangling his girlfriend to death with a curling iron cord and stealing her valuables to go gambling at a nearby casino.Before his death sentence, Gardner was previously convicted of attempted murder and served time for repeatedly shooting his ex-wife while she was six months pregnant in 1990.Now, Gardner is begging for the sweet release of death so he can finally leave “his cave” — a shoddy cell plagued with mold, poor plumbing, and “a sink and drain in the floor that bugs crawl in and out constantly,” he wrote in an email to USA Today.The killer previously penned a letter to the Arkansas State Supreme Court in 2020 saying he’d accept any means of execution, including the firing squad or electric chair.He doubled down in a 2025 filing, writing, “set a date and let’s do it.”Other prisoners waiting on death row, however, aren’t nearly as eager to meet their maker as Gardner and have thus complicated his request.
Ten inmates filed a lawsuit against Arkansas for its use of nitrogen hypoxia as a means of execution after its new authorization went into effect on Aug.5.
“Arkansas juries explicitly sentenced our clients to execution by lethal injection – not gas – and the General Assembly cannot rewrite those verdicts to impose death by this very different and highly problematic method,” Heather Fraley, an attorney for several of the plaintiffs, said in a press release announcing the filing.Death by nitrogen hypoxia consists of pumping the convicts with pure nitrogen gas, forcing them to suffocate, which Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi already permit to make up for the decreasing availability of the drugs needed for lethal injection, according to the Death Penalty Infor...