LITTLE ROCK (AP) - Lawyers for four Arkansas death-row inmates say "botched" executions show that the state's lethal injection method remains dangerous and inadequate.

In a filing to U.S. District Court, federal public defender Julie Brain cites several executions when witnesses either heard condemned inmates groan or medical teams failed to properly start an intravenous line as proof of the method's danger. Because of these concerns, the filing urges a judge to allow the lawsuit by Don William Davis, Jack Harold Jones Jr., Terrick Nooner and Frank Williams Jr. to continue.

Only Williams now has an execution date, scheduled for September 9.

Dina Tyler, a spokeswoman for the Arkansas Department of Correction, dimissed the lawyers' claims, saying the the condemned feel nothing "beyond the stick of the needle."

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)