London Lass
04-16-2008, 03:22 PM
Court Rejects Lethal Injection Challenge----Executions Had Been on Hold Nationwide While Justices Considered Case
The Supreme Court has upheld the three-drug lethal injection method used by the state of Kentucky in a 7-2 decision, clearing the way for a nationwide stay on executions to be lifted.
Chief Justice John Roberts penned the case opinion, while two Justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter, dissented.
The two convicted murderers at the center of the case, Ralph Baze and Thomas C. Bowling, had unwittingly caused an unofficial moratorium on executions across the country. Since the high court took their case last September, no executions were carried out as state and federal courts waited to see how the Supreme Court was going to rule.
Of the 36 states with a death penalty law on the books, all but one has designated lethal injection as the primary method of execution.
Baze and Bowling had argued that death by lethal injection constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. The drugs included in the protocol are sodium thiopental, which anesthetizes; pancuronium bromide, which paralyzes; and potassium chloride, which causes cardiac arrest.
Lawyers for the inmates argued that the drugs are administered by untrained officials who can botch the execution and cause extreme pain. They also argued that other drug combinations could be more effective in carrying out the death penalty.
Donald Verrilli, an attorney for the Kentucky inmates, has said, "It really is not about fine-tuning the system to create an incrementally less amount of pain. This is about avoiding torture."
But in court, the justices seemed skeptical of the argument. Conservative Justice Antonin Scalia said, "Where does this come from that you must find the method of execution that causes the least pain? We have approved electrocution. We have approved death by firing squad. I expect both of those have more possibilities of painful death than the protocol here."
There have been instances across the country of fumbled executions.
In Florida, convicted murderer Angel Diaz was executed in 2006. But a medical examiner's postmortem examination revealed that due to the improper injection of the anesthetic in his case, he had chemical burns on both arms. Experts believe he would have felt extreme pain for 20 to 30 minutes.
In Ohio, Joseph Clark was sentenced to death for killing a gas station attendant. But his 2006 execution was botched. It took him 86 minutes to die while he screamed in pain.
Even his victim's brother, Michael Manning, watched in horror. "He started to shake his head from side to side," said Manning. It took a technician 19 tries to insert the deadly intravenous needle.
Manning said what he saw in that execution chamber should not have happened. "I believe in the death penalty, but I side on the constitutionality side of it. The Eighth Amendment says no cruel and unusual punishment, and that's what I think it was."
In Missouri, the doctor who devised and supervised that state's lethal injection procedure has admitted in court that he is dyslexic, "so it's not unusual for me to make mistakes."
An investigation by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch revealed that the doctor, Alan R. Doerhoff, had been sued for malpractice more than 20 times. The paper also reported that one nurse who worked on Missouri executions is himself a convicted stalker.
But victims' rights advocates, as well as victims' family members, often have little sympathy for the arguments of the death row inmates.
Dennis Briscoe was 14 years old when Baze opened fire with an assault weapon and murdered his father and uncle -- both Kentucky law enforcement officers.
"What they should really consider is the pain my father and uncle went through when that happened," he said. "We should all be so lucky as to just fall asleep when we die."
Before the Supreme Court's ruling, Richard Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Center, a group that opposes the death penalty, acknowledged that death penalty cases wouldn't be overturned based on the High Court ruling. He said, "This is going to be a limited ruling in the end that changes our methods or tweaks the method of execution but doesn't stop it completely."
Dieter said that documented cases in which executions have been bungled convinced the court that it needed to take up the issue. "This sort of carelessness that has been used by the states has pushed the court to say, we want to review this. This is a national issue; all executions are virtually by the same methods. It's time that it came under our review."
(source: ABC News)
The Supreme Court has upheld the three-drug lethal injection method used by the state of Kentucky in a 7-2 decision, clearing the way for a nationwide stay on executions to be lifted.
Chief Justice John Roberts penned the case opinion, while two Justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter, dissented.
The two convicted murderers at the center of the case, Ralph Baze and Thomas C. Bowling, had unwittingly caused an unofficial moratorium on executions across the country. Since the high court took their case last September, no executions were carried out as state and federal courts waited to see how the Supreme Court was going to rule.
Of the 36 states with a death penalty law on the books, all but one has designated lethal injection as the primary method of execution.
Baze and Bowling had argued that death by lethal injection constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. The drugs included in the protocol are sodium thiopental, which anesthetizes; pancuronium bromide, which paralyzes; and potassium chloride, which causes cardiac arrest.
Lawyers for the inmates argued that the drugs are administered by untrained officials who can botch the execution and cause extreme pain. They also argued that other drug combinations could be more effective in carrying out the death penalty.
Donald Verrilli, an attorney for the Kentucky inmates, has said, "It really is not about fine-tuning the system to create an incrementally less amount of pain. This is about avoiding torture."
But in court, the justices seemed skeptical of the argument. Conservative Justice Antonin Scalia said, "Where does this come from that you must find the method of execution that causes the least pain? We have approved electrocution. We have approved death by firing squad. I expect both of those have more possibilities of painful death than the protocol here."
There have been instances across the country of fumbled executions.
In Florida, convicted murderer Angel Diaz was executed in 2006. But a medical examiner's postmortem examination revealed that due to the improper injection of the anesthetic in his case, he had chemical burns on both arms. Experts believe he would have felt extreme pain for 20 to 30 minutes.
In Ohio, Joseph Clark was sentenced to death for killing a gas station attendant. But his 2006 execution was botched. It took him 86 minutes to die while he screamed in pain.
Even his victim's brother, Michael Manning, watched in horror. "He started to shake his head from side to side," said Manning. It took a technician 19 tries to insert the deadly intravenous needle.
Manning said what he saw in that execution chamber should not have happened. "I believe in the death penalty, but I side on the constitutionality side of it. The Eighth Amendment says no cruel and unusual punishment, and that's what I think it was."
In Missouri, the doctor who devised and supervised that state's lethal injection procedure has admitted in court that he is dyslexic, "so it's not unusual for me to make mistakes."
An investigation by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch revealed that the doctor, Alan R. Doerhoff, had been sued for malpractice more than 20 times. The paper also reported that one nurse who worked on Missouri executions is himself a convicted stalker.
But victims' rights advocates, as well as victims' family members, often have little sympathy for the arguments of the death row inmates.
Dennis Briscoe was 14 years old when Baze opened fire with an assault weapon and murdered his father and uncle -- both Kentucky law enforcement officers.
"What they should really consider is the pain my father and uncle went through when that happened," he said. "We should all be so lucky as to just fall asleep when we die."
Before the Supreme Court's ruling, Richard Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Center, a group that opposes the death penalty, acknowledged that death penalty cases wouldn't be overturned based on the High Court ruling. He said, "This is going to be a limited ruling in the end that changes our methods or tweaks the method of execution but doesn't stop it completely."
Dieter said that documented cases in which executions have been bungled convinced the court that it needed to take up the issue. "This sort of carelessness that has been used by the states has pushed the court to say, we want to review this. This is a national issue; all executions are virtually by the same methods. It's time that it came under our review."
(source: ABC News)