Time is running out for lawyers to stop the state of Arkansas from carrying out its plan for an “execution assembly line”—killing seven men within an 11-day span.

The first executions for two of the men, Don Davis and Bruce Ward, are set for the same day, April 17.

The Guardian‘s Ed Pilkington writes:

The plan has been met with outrage by civil liberties and human rights groups.

“Arkansas’s plan to execute eight men over eleven days obscenely exalts speed over justice,” said Christina Swarns, NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund’s director of litigation.

The short time frame for the state-sanctioned killings, said Hutchinson, is because of the end-of-the-month expiration date on the state’s supply of midazolam, one of the three drugs that will be used in the lethal injection cocktail.

The Intercept‘s Liliana Segura wrote in a lengthy piece outlining the situation: