Posted on 04/16/2008 10:45:11 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON - 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."
The "death chamber" at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Huntsville Unit in Huntsville, Texas. The US Supreme Court has ruled that lethal injection is constitutional in a landmark ruling set to pave the way for executions to resume after a lull of more than six months. (AFP/File/Paul Buck)
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter dissented.
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What the heck was George Herbert Walker Bush thinking when he appointed Souter?
Wonder if Obama will have the Supreme Court investigated for hate crimes.
We’ll see how long it takes for California to get the OK from the local Fed Judge to resume executions.
I’d be curious as to what rationale that fagelah Souter used. He’s the most incoherent liberal on the court.
Payback to John Sununu.
At the top of his list, I’m sure.
There has been a supposed slide in support for capital punishment in recent years, fortunately it hasn’t moved the SCotUS from fulfilling a sacred oath. Above all things, do Justice. (and let God sort ‘em out)
The ‘quid pro quo’ on that deal still stinks.
“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...”
Been there, done that... No matter what form the death penalty takes, the libs will continue to attack it until hell freezes over. They only care about the rights of murderers, not about the rights of decent people.
sooner ginsberg goes the better and I think she will be gone this next term which is why this presidency is so important to get another decent judge who reads the law on there instead of another liberal judge who makes their own laws up and ignores the constitution
A list of the 3 drugs commonly used by state executioners
The Associated Press
The Supreme Court has upheld a three-drug regimen in executions, the most common method used by state and federal executioners in the United States. These are the three drugs used:
_Sodium thiopental, an anesthetic that is supposed to leave the inmate unconscious and unable to feel pain.
_Pancuronium bromide, a paralytic that is intended to prevent involuntary muscle movements.
_Potassium chloride, used to stop the heart.
Critics of the three-drug combination say that if the executioner administers too little anesthetic or makes mistakes in injecting it, the inmate could suffer excruciating pain from the other two drugs. But those involved in the execution might be unaware of the pain because the paralyzing drug would prevent any expression of that pain.
That's a shame. I remain convinced the proper way to administer capital punishment is by public stoning.
Even hanging is preferable to the sterile, detached, delayed, humane, behind-closed-doors methods we use these days, all in the name of so-called "progress."
just use a good hemp rope, it would be the greenest method.
He is and was an a**hole New World Order globalist and one of the worst presidents prior to his idiot son’s 8 years. His idiot son has now taken on the lead as THE worst president EVER, and that’s saying something given Jimmy the Communist Carter et al!!
Who the frick cares if the scumbags experience pain? Why the wussieness over what the convicted murderer “feels”? Because “we’re civilized”?
There probably is no way to guarantee a perfectly painless execution. And why should there be? NO need to deliberately cause pain, but it shouldn’t be of any great concern.
Besides, you can’t get much more painless than a properly performed hanging. BANG. and it’s over, as see the Saddam execution video.
This country actually needs more executions, not less.
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Warren Rudman the Man Behind David Souter
Here is an old article from 2000 (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3827/is_200003/ai_n8890265), which suggests that Warren Rudman would be Attorney General in a McCain administration. Rudman is one of the senior advisors in McCain’s campaign today.
Why is this important? Because Rudman was the man who was most responsible for George H. W. Bush appointing David Souter! And yet whenever McCain has a chance to mention his endorsements, he always mentions Rudman. Rudman was the most liberal senator while in the Senate.
Scared yet?
http://bizblogger.blogspot.com/2008/02/warren-rudman-man-behind-david-souter.html
The damage Souter has done to the Court and to the country is incalculable. What a lesson in naming to the Court someone with no paper trail.
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