News in brief

By The Associated Press

Arkansas sued for rejecting abortion-rights petitions

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. | Arkansas is being sued for rejecting petitions in favor of a proposed ballot measure to scale back the state’s abortion ban, with supporters asking the state Supreme Court on Tuesday to order officials to start counting more than 100,000 signatures from people who back amending the constitution.

The ballot measure wouldn’t make abortion a constitutionally protected right, but it would limit when abortion can be banned. Giving voters a chance to weigh in on the state’s ban would test support for abortion rights in Arkansas, where top elected officials regularly promote their opposition to the procedure.

Had they all been verified, the signatures submitted on the petitions would have been enough to get the measure on the November ballot. Arkansans for Limited Government, the group supporting the proposed constitutional amendment, asked the court to reverse the state’s decision. The group also wants the court to make Secretary of State John Thurston’s office begin counting.

Supreme Court grants Texas man a stay of execution

HUNTSVILLE, Texas | The U.S. Supreme Court granted a stay of execution for a Texas man 20 minutes before he was to receive a lethal injection Tuesday evening. The inmate has long maintained DNA testing would help prove he wasn’t responsible for the fatal stabbing of an 85-year-old woman during a home robbery decades ago.

The nation’s high court issued the indefinite stay shortly before inmate Ruben Gutierrez was to have been taken to the death chamber of a Huntsville prison.

Gutierrez was condemned for the 1998 killing of Escolastica Harrison at her home in Brownsville in Texas’ southern tip. Prosecutors said the killing of the mobile home park manager and retired teacher was part of an attempt to steal more than $600,000 she had hidden in her home because of her mistrust of banks.

—From AP reports