Arkansas has carried out the death penalty for the first time in 12 years and plans to execute three more people this coming week, as it bids to rush through a spate of lethal injections before the required drugs pass their use by date.

Ledell Lee, 51, was the first to be put to death out of the group of eight men that Arkansas originally planned to execute within a span of 11 days.

The eight executions would have been the most by a state in such a compressed period since the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.

And the rapid pace of the executions sparked a flurry of legal challenges – three executions were cancelled because of court decisions, and court rulings have put at least one other in doubt.