With Arizona’s rush to resume executions come unanswered questions on the sanity and innocence of the first two of 21 condemned prisoners and the motivations of Attorney General Mark Brnovich.

Arizona is about to become a hotbed of debate over the secrecy surrounding executions, an issue in which the U.S. Supreme Court has taken notice.

Just four states carried out more than three-fourths of the executions in the United States this year, while another 23 states have not put an inmate to death in 10 years, an anti-capital punishment group reports.

With two executions already carried out so far this year and two more up for consideration next week, Arizona is on pace to match its busiest year for executions since establishing the death penalty in 1910 and be among the busiest death-penalty states in the nation, The Associated Press has determined.

In recent weeks, we’ve seen a criminal executed and another execution is scheduled pending a last-minute review. Every time Arizona doles out the most severe punishment humans have the capacity to inflict on one another, I find myself asking: When criminals are killed for their crimes, what are we hoping will result, and what actually results?

As black curtains were drawn March 29 to cover the corpse of Eric J. King, the 89th person Arizona has executed, three Republican legislators left the death chamber with their support of the ultimate punishment intact, while a fourth still had some reservations.