Hobbs v. Jones

2012 Ark. 293, 412 S.W.3d 844, 2012 Ark. LEXIS 309
CourtSupreme Court of Arkansas
DecidedJune 22, 2012
DocketNo. 11-1128
StatusPublished
Cited by58 cases

This text of 2012 Ark. 293 (Hobbs v. Jones) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Arkansas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Hobbs v. Jones, 2012 Ark. 293, 412 S.W.3d 844, 2012 Ark. LEXIS 309 (Ark. 2012).

Opinions

JIM GUNTER, Justice.

| jAppellants/cross-appellees, the Arkansas Department of Correction and its director, Ray Hobbs, and appellees/cross-appellants, a group of several prisoners awaiting execution on Arkansas’s death row, appeal an order of the Pulaski County Circuit Court granting in part and denying in part cross-motions for summary judgment. We have jurisdiction over this appeal as it involves issues pertaining to the interpretation or construction of the Arkansas Constitution. See Ark. Sup.Ct. R. l-2(a)(l) (2011). We affirm the circuit court’s order to the extent it declared Ark. Code Ann. § 5-4-617 (Supp.2011), unconstitutional and found that |2certain claims presented by the prisoners were moot. We reverse the circuit court’s order striking language from the statute and granting injunctive relief.

On March 8, 2010, Jack Harold Jones, a prisoner incarcerated on Arkansas’s death row, filed suit against Ray Hobbs, in his official capacity as Director of the Arkansas Department of Correction, and the Arkansas Department of Correction (hereinafter collectively referred to as “ADC”). Jones asserted that the Method of Execution Act of 2009 (“MEA”), codified at Ark. Code Ann. § 5-4-617, violates the separation-of-powers doctrine in article 4 of the Arkansas Constitution. Jones was scheduled to be executed on March 16, 2010. He maintained that his claim was timely because this court had only recently held that the MEA was retroactively applicable to currently incarcerated death-row inmates. Jones asked the court to grant preliminary injunctive relief to stay his execution during the pendency of the case, to enter declaratory judgment that Jones’s execution pursuant to the MEA was unconstitutional, and to grant permanent in-junctive relief barring Jones’s execution until passage of a . new statute incorporating standards to satisfy the Arkansas Constitution.

On July 29, 2010, Jones filed an amended complaint, listing a total of six claims: (1) that the MEA was an unconstitutional violation of the separation-of-powers doctrine; (2) that his execution would violate the Federal Food, Drug & Cosmetic Act (FDCA), codified at 21 U.S.C. §§ 301 et seq., because the ADC lacked a valid prescription for the drugs it intended to use during Jones’s execution; (3) that his execution would violate the FDCA because the drugs the ADC intended to use had not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA); (4) that his execution would violate the Federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA), |3codified at 21 U.S.C. §§ 801 et seq., because the ADC lacked a valid prescription for the drugs it intended to use during his execution; (5) that his execution would violate the CSA because the ADC staff were to administer controlled substances to Jones without proper registration; and (6) that his execution would violate the Nurse Practices Act (NPA), codified at Ark.Code Ann. § 17-87-101, because the ADC intended to use lay persons to administer the drugs during execution. Jones again sought declaratory and injunctive relief. With permission of the circuit court, nine other death-row inmates, including Stacy Eugene Johnson, Alvin Jackson, Kenneth Williams, Bruce Earl Ward, Jason McGehee, Don W. Davis, Marcel Williams, Frank Williams Jr.,1 and Terrick Nooner . (hereinafter collectively referred to with Jones as “the prisoners”), subsequently filed complaints in intervention asserting substantially the same claims and requesting the same relief as Jones in his amended complaint.

On August 17, 2010, ADC filed a motion to dismiss the prisoners’ amended complaints on the basis that they failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted pursuant to Ark. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6). It argued that dismissal was appropriate because the lethal-injection statute set forth general execution provisions but left the details to the director of the ADC; because the CSA and the FDCA were not enacted to regulate capital punishment and did not authorize a private cause of action; and because the NPA did not govern the administration of lethal drugs during execution. Following a hearing, the circuit |4court entered an order on December 16, 2010, granting ADC’s motion to dismiss with regard to the FDCA, CSA, and NPA. Accordingly, it dismissed claims two, three, four, five, and six of the prisoners’ amended complaints. It denied ADC’s motion as to the separation-of-powers claim.

On January 24, 2011, the prisoners filed a supplemental complaint arguing that the ADC intended' to execute them using “chemicals obtained from an overseas driving school purporting to distribute drugs from a non-FDA approved manufacturing source.” The prisoners alleged that the ADC refused to disclose any information about the chemicals or how they were procured. The prisoners added three claims: (1) that use of non-FDA approved chemicals purchased from a foreign driving school violated the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment in the Eighth Amendment and article 2, section 9 of the Arkansas Constitution (claim seven); (2) that the ADC was suppressing information necessary to scrutinize the identity, strength, quality, and purity of the drugs obtained in violation of the due process clauses contained in the Fourteenth Amendment and article 2, section 8 of the Arkansas Constitution (claim eight); and (3) that use of the non-FDA approved drugs obtained from a foreign driving school would violate the prisoners’ rights to due process and rights to be free from cruel and unusual punishment (claim nine). The prisoners asked for temporary, preliminary, and permanent injunctive relief to enjoin the ADC from executing prisoners with the non-FDA approved chemicals and declaratory relief. On February 16, 2011, ADC moved to dismiss claims eight and nine as set forth in the supplemental complaint on the basis that the prisoners had access to the courts, particularly the circuit court involved in this [ ¿litigation, and that the prisoners failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. The circuit court granted ADC’s motion to dismiss with regard to claim eight but denied its request to dismiss claim nine.

ADC filed a motion for summary judgment on May 4, 2011, asserting that it was entitled to judgment as a matter of law on the three remaining claims alleged by the prisoners. Specifically, it maintained that claims seven and nine failed because the prisoners had not and could not provide any evidence that the use of the non-FDA approved chemicals created any substantial risk of serious harm. Further, the ADC contended that with regard to claim one, the. facial challenge to the MEA on the basis of separation of powers, it was entitled to judgment as a matter of law because the statute could be applied constitutionally and provided sufficient guidance to executive officials in administering executions. The prisoners filed a cross-motion for summary judgment as to claim one regarding the constitutionality of the MEA on May 31, 2011, asserting that the MEA delegates policymaking discretion to the ADC director without setting forth reasonable standards for the exercise of that discretion in violation of the separation-of-powers clause of the Arkansas Constitution.

Thereafter, on July 21, 2011, ADC filed a second motion for summary judgment asking the court to enter judgment as a matter of law as to claims seven and nine on the basis of mootness.

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Bluebook (online)
2012 Ark. 293, 412 S.W.3d 844, 2012 Ark. LEXIS 309, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/hobbs-v-jones-ark-2012.