New fishing pier/boat dock at Millwood

I took a few minutes away from my phone, which has been blowing up with news on today's Supreme Court ruling to celebrate our latest achievement with the Millwood Lake Focus Committee. Here is our latest project: a new fishing pier and boat dock at Yarborough Landing in Little River County.

Arkansas Supreme Court strikes down lethal injection law today

In a 5-2 decision (Byron Freeland sat for J. Corbin, who recused), the Arkansas Supreme Court found Act 1296 of 2009 unconstitutional and struck down Arkansas's execution law. Arkansas currently has 40 inmates on death row. The court found that the legislature unlawfully delegated authority to the executive branch by giving some discretion to the Department of Correction as to the type and amount of chemicals to be used in executions.

Arkansas is now the only state with legal executions that has found such a separation of powers violation, though other states (including Texas) also have delegated execution procedural powers to correction officials. As a matter of fact, our statute is identical to the Texas statute currently in place. Their law was also challenged, and the Texas Supreme Court upheld their law, ruling that the delegation of authority as set out in both the Arkansas and Texas execution law is permissible.

In addition to Texas, other states (Idaho, Delaware, and Florida) have similar statutes in place that delegate some of the executional authority to an administrative agency, and likewise, those statutes have been found constitutional. Nevertheless, our statute will apparently have to be modified in order to meet constitutional muster of the seven Arkansas Supreme Court justices.

NCAA Baseball Super-Regional

I'm in Waco hoping to extend this series for another day. Go Hogs