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CRIME

Inmates put to death in Arkansas during the past week

Associated Press
Published | Updated
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    FILE - This undated file photo provided by the Arkansas Department of Correction shows death-row inmate Jack Jones, who is one of two Arkansas killers set to die Monday, April 24, 2017, in the nation's first double execution in more than 16 years. Jones was given the death penalty for the 1995 rape and killing of Mary Phillips. (Arkansas Department of Correction via AP, File) (The Associated Press)

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    FILE - This undated file photo provided by the Arkansas Department of Correction shows death-row inmate Marcel Williams who is one of two Arkansas killers set to die Monday, April 24, 2017, in the nation's first double execution in more than 16 years. Williams was sent to death row for the 1994 rape and killing of 22-year-old Stacy Errickson, whom he kidnapped from a gas station in central Arkansas. (Arkansas Department of Correction via AP, File) (The Associated Press)

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – Arkansas planned Thursday to execute a fourth inmate in eight days. Here is a look at the three inmates the state has put to death since last week:

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LEDELL LEE

Lee, 51, was sentenced to die for the 1993 death of his neighbor Debra Reese, who was struck 36 times with a tire tool her husband had given her for protection. He also was serving prison terms for the rapes of a Jacksonville woman and a Jacksonville teenager.

Lee, who struck Reese 36 times, was arrested less than an hour after the slaying after spending some of the $300 he had stolen from her. He had been released on parole 10 weeks before her death after serving time for burglary and theft. DNA evidence linked Lee to other attacks, including the abduction of Christine Lewis, 22.

Lewis was abducted five days before being found beaten, raped and strangled. Jurors in that trial couldn't reach a decision and prosecutors dropped the case after the state Supreme Court upheld Lee's death sentence for Reese's murder.

Lee was executed April 20.

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JACK HAROLD JONES JR.

Jones, 52, was convicted of killing bookkeeper Mary Phillips in 1995 and trying to kill her daughter, Lacy, during a robbery at an accounting office. Phillips was found naked from the waist down with a cord from a nearby coffee pot tied around her neck. Lacey, left for dead, woke up as police photographed her.

Lacey testified that Jones had visited the accounting office twice on the day her mother died and described his tattoos to investigators. Courts rejected appeals based on Jones' claim that lawyers didn't do enough to keep him off death row.

Jones was executed Monday.

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MARCEL WILLIAMS

Williams, 46, was convicted of suffocating a young mother of two after raping her. Stacy Errickson typically carpooled to work in North Little Rock with a friend, but the 22-year-old drove her own truck on Nov. 20, 1994.

Prosecutors say Williams abducted her when she stopped for gas in Jacksonville, then drove her to various ATMs and had her take out about $350. Police found the woman's hosiery and lunch cooler at a storage facility, then found her beaten and bound body in a park two weeks later.

Williams confessed to killing the woman. His jury deliberated about 30 minutes.

Williams was executed Monday.

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Follow Kelly P. Kissel on Twitter at https://twitter.com/kisselAP and go to http://bigstory.ap.org/author/kelly-p-kissel to see his work.