In what is becoming a trend, Tennessee Supreme Court Justice Sharon Lee blasted her colleagues this week after the high court's latest decision on a case challenging the state's lethal injection method.
"Appellate review so hurried that it is meaningless could inflict irreparable harm on the inmates facing execution and jeopardize the public’s confidence and trust in the impartiality and integrity of the judicial system," Lee said in her dissent.
This week the state Supreme Court issued a new ruling denying a request by some death row inmates to slow down the appellate schedule. The court gave no reason as to why the request was denied.
Expedited court schedule criticized
"Two weeks ago, the Court unwisely put this appeal on a 'rocket docket.' Now, it is “Houston, we have a problem',” Lee wrote.
"The Court’s response is to require these plaintiffs to comply with the super-expedited schedule it issued two weeks ago—before these plaintiffs had even filed their notice of appeal. The Court finds itself in a box of its own creation."
In July, death row inmates lost a legal case in which they argued using toxic chemicals to execute a condemned offender is cruel and unusual punishment that violates constitutional provisions against torture.
After the execution,
the state Supreme Court took control of the appeal, setting accelerated deadlines far outside the norm. The schedule may allow a ruling before the next execution date, which is set by the Supreme Court. Edmund Zagorski, a 63-year-old convicted in 1984 of killing two men, is slated to die Oct. 11.
Attorneys given little time to prepare
The court's decisions leave attorneys for death row offenders to conduct work that routinely takes months in a matter of days. Oral arguments in the appeal are scheduled to begin Oct. 3.
Lee ripped those deadlines at the time. Her latest derision of the majority is in response to the court's decision to not allow some death row offenders more time to prepare their appeal.
Four of the 32 remaining death row offenders on the case are interested in pursuing a different legal strategy on appeal, and asked the court not to tie their legal deadlines to Zagorski's execution.
The four death row inmates include David Earl Miller, Nicholas Todd Sutton and Stephen Michael West, offenders who also filed a recent federal challenge to the state's execution method. The inmates
raised the prospect of Tennessee using the firing squad as a more humane way to execute offenders, compared to the current three-drug lethal injection protocol.
Larry McKay is the fourth death row offender included in the state attempt at a separate appeal.
Dana C. Hansen Chavis, a federal public defender representing Miller and the other inmates, lauded Lee's dissent.
"The dissent recognizes the difficulties and unfairness presented by the expedited schedule, circumstances we outlined in our motion seeking relief from those burdens," Chavis said in an emailed statement.
"We stated that 'The radically accelerated briefing schedule imposes a substantial burden and is driven by Mr. Zagorski’s execution date; which is a factor beyond the control of the Miller Plaintiffs. The 'highly expedited' deadlines deprive Mr. Miller of two-months’ time he would otherwise have before his execution date to prepare, develop, and present his case to the Court."
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
