Posted on 09/25/2007 10:47:33 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to consider the constitutionality of lethal injections in a case that could affect the way inmates are executed around the country.
The high court will hear a challenge from two inmates on death row in Kentucky — Ralph Baze and Thomas Clyde Bowling Jr. — who sued Kentucky in 2004, claiming lethal injection amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.
Baze has been scheduled for execution Tuesday night, but the Kentucky Supreme Court halted the proceedings earlier this month.
The U.S. Supreme Court has previously made it easier for death row inmates to contest the lethal injections used across the country for executions.
But until Tuesday, the justices had never agreed to consider the fundamental question of whether the mix of drugs used in Kentucky and elsewhere violates the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
All 37 states that perform lethal injections use the same three-drug cocktail, but at least 10 states suspended its use after opponents alleged it was ineffective and cruel, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
The three consist of an anesthetic, a muscle paralyzer, and a substance to stop the heart. Death penalty foes have argued that if the condemned prisoner is not given enough anesthetic, he can suffer excruciating pain without being able to cry out.
U.S. District Judge Aleta Trauger ruled last week that Tennessee's method of lethal injection is unconstitutional and ordered the state not to execute a death row inmate using that method. The state is still deciding whether to appeal the judge's ruling, but agreed to stop a pending execution.
A ruling from California in the case of convicted killer Michael Morales resulted in the statewide suspension of executions.
States began using lethal injection in 1978 as an alternative to the historic methods of execution: electrocution, gassing, hanging and shooting. Since the death penalty resumed in 1977, 790 of 958 executions have been by injection.
Baze and Bowling sued in 2004 and a trial was held the following spring. A state judge upheld the use of lethal injection and the Kentucky Supreme Court affirmed that decision. The appeal taken up Tuesday by the U.S. Supreme Court stems from that decision.
"This is probably one of the most important cases in decades as it relates to the death penalty," said David Barron, the public defender who represents Baze and Bowling.
The office of the Kentucky attorney general had no comment Tuesday on the case.
Baze, 52, has been on death row for 14 years. He was sentenced for the 1992 shooting deaths of Powell County Sheriff Steve Bennett and Deputy Arthur Briscoe.
Bennett and Briscoe were serving warrants on Baze when he shot them. Baze has said the shootings were the result of a family dispute that got out of hand and resulted in the sheriff being called.
Bowling was sentenced to death for killing Edward and Tina Earley and shooting their 2-year-old son outside the couple's Lexington, Ky., dry-cleaning business in 1990. Bowling was scheduled to die in November 2004, but a judge stopped it after Bowling and Baze sued over the constitutionality of lethal injection.
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Associated Press writer Brett Barrouquere reported from Louisville, Ky.
depends on the meaning of the word “and”
Cruel and unusual as compared to what, electrocution or the gas chamber? Give me a freakin’ break. Of all the methods of execution, lethal injection is by far the most humane.
Maybe we should just start injecting them with drain cleaner.
You could slam them with a barbituate until it paralyzed the cardiac and respiratory centers of the brain. That’s what you do when you euthanize an animal. If it’s good enough for a dog it’s good enough for a convict.
Drawing and quartering may be cruel and inhumane in some cases, but going to sleep and not waking up after you have been tranquillized...seems almost too humane.
Too bad some many judges can only “feel” for the accused and not their victims...
It sure beats letting the victim's family have at you with crowbars and empty moonshine jugs, like they used to do in Kentucky, right?
Although I am a death-penalty opponent, I have to say that this sort of suit is just stupid.
The Constitution explicitly mentions depriving someone of life and it was written at a time when hanging was the standard, meaning that hanging must pass the original intent test concerning what is cruel and unusual punishment.
If they want to refuse the lethal injection, offer them that time-honored tradition of hanging.
Now, how does one file a friend of the court brief stating that even if it was excruciating pain, it’s just the warm up act for hell they’ll suffer fro the rest of their immortal lives.
We just had an execution delayed in Tennessee over the same case.
One of the biggest problems with capital punishment is the inability to distinguish “painless” from “aesthetically pleasing”. That is, the one limitation on execution is “cruel or unusual”. If it is not painful, it should not matter if it is pleasing to the eye of witnesses.
The most painful methods of execution used in the US, from most to least, could be choking, either a botched hanging or poison gas; an ineffective injected chemical cocktail; a bullet that misses the small kill zone around the heart; and the least painful, electrocution.
However, lethal injection is the least objectionable to witnesses of the lot. But is this a good reason to prefer it over something that is not painful?
Electricity travels far faster than the electrical nerve impulses. Electrocution is designed to fry the electrical system of the brain instantly, so that it *cannot* feel pain. The only known failures of this process came about by a man who inserted and left hundreds of needles in his flesh, thus short circuiting the electricity; and when the heart continued to beat in some cases, even though the brain was fried, so too much electricity is used, and a degree of “cooking” happens. The condemned was dead, but their heart didn’t know it yet.
If something wasn’t considered cruel and unusual to the founding fathers, then it is constitutional to practice it now unless it has been re-addressed by another constitutional amendment. And NonValueAdded is right—The constraint is cruel AND unusual, not cruel OR unusual.
Since the state argues they do not want to be cruel why not give the prisoner the choice of also having enough morphine to feel no pain. Wouldn’t that make this issue go away?
The most humane form of execution is the guillotine, the nerves are severed before the pain signal can be sent to the brain.
It’s a nasty mess to clean up, though.
I suggest they start with Ginsburg.
(yes..that's sarcasm. Don't taze me, Jim.)
L
And?
When I had my wisdom teeth taken out... they gave me a shot to knock me out... and told me to count backward from 10.
I think I made it to 8.
Now if they could give me that shot... and then go in and rip out my 4 wisdom teeth without me feeling a thing...the 3-drug cocktail for lethal injection is just fine.
Just another case of liberal thought - forget the REAL victim and make the criminal into the victim.
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