Longest-serving inmate on Arkansas’ death row dies from natural causes

Bruce Ward, a convicted murderer who was the longest-serving inmate on Arkansas’ death row, has died, the state Department of Corrections said. He was 68.

The state Department of Corrections said Ward was pronounced dead Tuesday from natural causes. He had been held on death row at the Varner SuperMax unit in Gould, located 67 miles (108 kilometers) south of Little Rock.

Citing confidentiality, the department declined to provide any further details on Ward’s health or the circumstances surrounding his death.

Ward was on death row for 35 years after being convicted for the 1989 killing of Rebecca Doss, who was found strangled in the men’s room of the Little Rock convenience store where she worked. Ward’s death leaves 24 inmates on death row in the state.

He was among 8 inmates the state had planned to execute over a 2-week period in 2017 before its supply of a lethal injection drug expired. Ward’s execution and three others were halted by court decisions, though the state executed four other inmates.

All three of the drugs used in the state’s lethal injection protocol have expired and Arkansas has been unable to purchase replacements because the manufacturers object to their products being used in executions.

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders last month signed a new law allowing the state to use nitrogen gas for executions. The measure makes Arkansas the fifth state to legalize that method and supporters said it would allow the state to resume executions.

The law doesn’t take effect until later this year, and officials have not said how soon they plan to resume executions.

The longest serving inmate now on Arkansas’ death now is Don Davis, who was sentenced in 1992 for killing a northwest Arkansas woman after breaking into her home. Davis, who was also one of the inmates spared from execution in 2017, was hospitalized for several days after he attempted suicide.

There are about 2,100 people on death row in the United States, and more than half have been awaiting execution for more than 18 years, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Source: The Associated Press, Staff, April 3, 2025

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde

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