Lawyers for eight death row inmates in Arkansas say their challenge of the state's execution procedures should warrant a U.S. Supreme Court review that would likely revisit the high court's ruling on an Oklahoma case.
 
The Arkansas Supreme Court ruled against the prisoners last month, but the inmates' lawyers want the court to withhold a final order pending a possible U.S. Supreme Court review.

The office of Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge filed papers Thursday saying there are no federal issues at stake that could prompt a look by the nation's highest court and asked the state court to allow the inmates' executions to be carried out. However, in court papers filed late Monday, the inmates' lawyers said justices may want to look again at a challenge to the surgical sedative midazolam that Oklahoma inmate Richard Glossip filed. Oklahoma uses a three-drug protocol, starting with midazolam.

Glossip was hours away from his scheduled execution last September when prison officials realized they had received potassium acetate, not potassium chloride. A separate review revealed that another inmate, Charles Warner, was given potassium acetate instead of potassium chloride as one of three drugs when he was put to death in January of last year.

When upholding Arkansas' execution protocol, the Arkansas Supreme Court cited the Glossip case.

"Glossip has resulted in unmitigated disaster in Oklahoma," the Arkansas inmates' lawyers wrote Monday. "Since the Supreme Court approved of the midazolam protocol there, Oklahoma authorities have shown that they cannot properly carry out the protocol.