[WCADP-list] US Supreme Court upholds use of lethal injections

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Supreme Court upholds use of lethal injections

 

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court upheld the most common method of lethal
injections executions Wednesday, clearing the way for states to resume
executions that have been on hold for nearly 7 months.

 

The justices, by a 7-2 vote, turned back a constitutional challenge to the
procedures in place in Kentucky, which uses three drugs to sedate, paralyze
and kill inmates. Similar methods are used by roughly three dozen states.

 

The governor of Virginia lifted his state's moratorium on executions two
hours after the high court issued its ruling.

 

"We ... agree that petitioners have not carried their burden of showing that
the risk of pain from maladministration of a concededly humane lethal
injection protocol, and the failure to adopt untried and untested
alternatives, constitute cruel and unusual punishment," Chief Justice John
Roberts said in an opinion that garnered only three votes. Four other
justices, however, agreed with the outcome.

 

Roberts' opinion did leave open subsequent challenges to lethal injection
practices if a state refused to adopt an alternative method that
significantly reduced the risk of severe pain.

 

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter dissented.

 

Executions have been on hold since September, when the court agreed to hear
the Kentucky case. There was no immediate indication when they would resume,
but prosecutors in several states said they would seek new execution dates
if the court ruled favorably in the Kentucky case.

 

Forty-two people were executed last year among more than 3,300 people on
death row across the country. Another roughly two dozen executions did not
go forward because of the Supreme Court's review, death penalty opponents
said.

 

The argument against the three-drug protocol is that if the initial
anesthetic does not take hold, the other two drugs can cause excruciating
pain. One of those drugs, a paralytic, would render the prisoner unable to
express his discomfort.

 

The case before the court came from Kentucky, where two death row inmates
did not ask to be spared execution or death by injection. Instead, they
wanted the court to order a switch to a single drug, a barbiturate, that
causes no pain and can be given in a large enough dose to cause death.

 

At the very least, they said, the state should be required to impose tighter
controls on the three-drug process to ensure that the anesthetic is given
properly.

 

Roberts said the one-drug method, frequently used in animal euthanasia, "has
problems of its own, and has never been tried by a single state."

 

Kentucky has had only one execution by lethal injection and it did not
present any obvious problems, both sides in the case agreed.

 

But executions elsewhere, in Florida and Ohio, took much longer than usual,
with strong indications that the prisoners suffered severe pain in the
process. Workers had trouble inserting the IV lines that are used to deliver
the drugs.

 

Roberts said "a condemned prisoner cannot successfully challenge a state's
method of execution merely by showing a slightly or marginally safer
alternative."

 

Ginsburg, in her dissent, said her colleagues should have asked Kentucky
courts to consider whether the state includes adequate safeguards to ensure
a prisoner is unconscious and thus unlikely to suffer severe pain.

 

Justice John Paul Stevens, while agreeing with the outcome, said the court's
decision would not end the debate over lethal injection. "I am now convinced
that this case will generate debate not only about the constitutionality of
the three-drug protocol, and specifically about the justification for the
use of the paralytic agent, pancuronium bromide, but also about the
justification for the death penalty itself," Stevens said.

 

Stevens suggested that states could spare themselves legal costs and delays
in executions by eliminating the use of the paralytic.

 

Ty Alper, a death penalty opponent and associate director of the Death
Penalty Clinic at the University of California-Berkeley School of Law, said
he expects challenges to lethal injections will continue in several states.

 

The Rev. Pat Delahanty, head of the Kentucky Coalition to Abolish the Death
Penalty, said the ruling wasn't a surprise.

 

"We never expected it to do more than maybe slow down executions in Kentucky
or elsewhere," Delahanty said. "We're going to be facing some executions
soon."


  _____  

Did you know?  The three drugs used to execute humans are outlawed for use
on animals because it is known to frequently cause extreme pain.  


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