The Supreme Court reopened the nation's execution chambers on Wednesday, rejecting a claim by Kentucky inmates — echoed by prisoners across the country — that lethal injection as it is widely practiced is cruel and unusual punishment.
This result came as no surprise to experts on the death penalty. Neither the case law nor the composition of the Supreme Court gave the inmates much hope. The surprise had come last fall, when the Court effectively halted all executions while it pondered the issue.
What was striking about the case, Baze v. Rees, was that after 36 years of extensive litigation over capital punishment, the Court is as scattered as ever. A case in which none of the justices ultimately found much merit nevertheless provoked seven separate opinions, controlled by a weak three-judge plurality.
"If it takes them seven separate opinions, controlled by a 3-vote plurality, totalling 97 pages, just to dispose of a case in which they basically all suggest that there's no there there, it doesn't bode well for them tidying up this area of the law," says Mark Olive, a veteran anti-death penalty attorney.
Like most states, Kentucky uses a three-drug combination to execute condemned prisoners. The first drug is supposed to render the inmate unconscious, the second paralyzes the lungs and the third stops the heart. If the first drug isn't administered properly and the inmate was left awake, the second and third drugs will produce an agonizing death. The question before the Court was: How far must a state go to minimize that risk?
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Source: CNN.com
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