Attorney General Tim Griffin has spent a lot of time in recent weeks with a spate of court rulings on everything from the 10 Commandments to a law affecting transgender youths. He’s anticipating giving more attention to a new lawsuit affecting the state’s death penalty.
Arkansas lawmakers passed a law this session to allow for execution of death row inmates by nitrogen gas. In recent years, the state has been stymied in its efforts to purchase the drugs needed to carry out the death penalty by lethal injection.
Griffin said he’s prepared to defend the new state law.
“There’s not a lot to report on the substance of the lawsuit at this point, but I do think with the current Supreme Court and looking at the jurisprudence that we’ve got, I think we’ve got a good argument to make and a good chance to win on this,” said Griffin.
“I also think that it’s a great idea to change the law to allow for this because if you have a death penalty on the books and it’s never used, you don’t really have a death penalty. And so for me, the rule of law, what the law says and how we apply it is all really important,” he added.
On October 7-8, Griffin will host a Social Media Summit at Little Rock’s Statehouse Convention Center. The summit will focus on the risks posed by social media, including scams, threats to minors, and interference by foreign actors.
State and national experts will participate as will Gov. Sarah Sanders. The event is free and open to the public. People can register at Arkansas.ag.gov.
Griffin said the point is to explore different safety, security and legal aspects of social media and to provide a better understanding of the social media landscape for parents, educators, counselors, law enforcement and anyone else interested in the topic.
“We’re going to have addiction experts talk about it, some medical, some psychologists. We’re going to have technical experts talking about the algorithms and how they are crafted to get you the dopamine hit that you get. And you can’t stop scrolling,” he said. “We’re going to also talk about the dangers for youth in particular and the tools parents have. We’re going to have law enforcement training. We’re going to talk about how criminals use social media for human trafficking and prostitution and sex slavery. We’re going to talk about how they use social media to get your financial information. We’re going to talk about China. China is really engaged in this space and they love collecting data on Americans.”
You can watch Griffin’s full interview in the video below.