In Arkansas, death penalty opponents are set to rally at the State Capitol in Little Rock today for a Good Friday protest ahead of the planned execution of seven prisoners over an 11-day stretch. Gov. Asa Hutchinson has approved the plan, which would see Bruce Earl Ward and Don William Davis put to death by lethal injection on Monday in back-to-back executions. Five more prisoners are scheduled to die before the end of April, when the state’s supply of the sedative midazolam—one of three drugs used by Arkansas to stop a prisoner’s heartbeat—is set to expire. This is Robert Dunham of the Death Penalty Information Center.

Robert Dunham: “Arkansas has a supply of the drug midazolam. That supply expires on April 30th. Think of it as a—if you were shopping in the supermarket, and there’s a use-by date. Well, what Arkansas has essentially done is taken the concept of the use-by date and converted it to a kill-by date.”

On Thursday, a pair of pharmaceutical companies filed suit in federal court seeking to prevent their drugs from being used in the executions, saying Arkansas acquired its supplies of potassium chloride and midazolam from an unauthorized seller.