Supreme Court Reviews Lethal Injection, Cruel and unusual? Constitutional?

[OrangeEmpire]

U.S. Supreme Court walks into lethal injection issue

Agrees to hear Kentucky death penalty case
By Howard Mintz

Facing near legal chaos in states that use the death penalty, the U.S. Supreme Court's decision Tuesday to review a Kentucky lethal injection case signals the justices are prepared to try to settle the issue for California and other states.

The Supreme Court's brief order to review the appeal of two Kentucky death row inmates marks the first time the justices will consider the constitutionality of an execution method since 1879, when the high court upheld Utah's firing squad. The Supreme Court will now examine whether a fatal three drug cocktail most of the states use to execute inmates may violate the ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Among the four key questions the justices will consider is whether states can execute an inmate if there is a "substantial risk" of pain and suffering through lethal injection. By taking the Kentucky case, the justices are expected to provide a road map for judges around the country, including in California, where a San Jose federal judge has been reviewing the issue for more than a year.

[...]

A Supreme Court review of lethal injection has been brewing for years. Most states with a death penalty have turned to the method following similar legal challenges of alternatives, such as the gas chamber and the electric chair. A federal appeals court declared California's gas chamber unconstitutional in the mid-1990s, prompting the switch to lethal injection.

In recent years, the Supreme Court has been repeatedly asked to review challenges to various states' lethal injection procedures, but has steered clear of the central constitutional issue. The justices did make it easier for condemned inmates to file challenges, prompting a number of cases to unfold in states such as Missouri, Tennessee and Kentucky.

A federal judge in Tennessee recently put executions on hold there after concluding that the state's lethal injection method was too flawed. Fogel, in the California case, called this state's execution procedures "broken," but fixable.

In the Kentucky case, the state courts rejected challenges from death row inmates Ralph Baze and Clyde Bowling Jr. after a trial was held in 2005 to review Kentucky's execution method. It was the Baze and Bowling case the Supreme Court agreed to hear on Monday.

Kentucky uses the same three drugs to put an inmate to death as California - sodium thiopental to sedate the inmate; pancurium bromide to paralyze the muscles in breathing; and potassium chloride, which stops the heart. Lawyers for death row inmates say pancurium bromide conceals an inmate's suffering and masks the potential of the third drug, causing a searingly painful death.

One of the four issues the Supreme Court may address is whether it is unconstitutional to use those three drugs if other chemicals are available that pose "less risk of pain and suffering." But legal experts say the court's ultimate ruling may focus more on how a state administers those drugs, rather than what drugs are used.

The Supreme Court, experts say, can instead clarify the standard for what amounts to a cruel and unusual execution and the obligations of states to administer the fatal drugs with proper safeguards.

Thoughts?

 

[volinbham]

I don't see how you can have capital punishment without every form being viewed by some as cruel and unusual.

 

[MG1968]

I don't see how you have a working justice system in which the criminals have more rights than the victims.

 

[CSpindizzy]

I've always wondered about the gas chamber. We really screamed about the Nazis using it and then we use it. I'm shocked no Jewish groups have complained about that.

 

[TennTradition]

I've always wondered about the gas chamber. We really screamed about the Nazis using it and then we use it. I'm shocked no Jewish groups have complained about that.

It wasn't like the method the Nazis used to kill the Jews was what our complaint was about. Your comparison is apples to oranges. It would be like our suggesting the Nazis try lethal injection or electrocution as more humane methods of execution than poison gas. Our complaint was obviously the unjust murder based on race/religion, which isn't the case here.

 

[vader]

If done correctly, I don't see why this would be "cruel and unusual"...seriously

 

[allvol123]

Russian roulette? Although there really is no roulette with those guns.

 

[vader]

Distract them with something and then give a quick tap to the back of the head. They would never see it coming, ergo not cruel.

 

[CSpindizzy]

It wasn't like the method the Nazis used to kill the Jews was what our complaint was about. Your comparison is apples to oranges. It would be like our suggesting the Nazis try lethal injection or electrocution as more humane methods of execution than poison gas. Our complaint was obviously the unjust murder based on race/religion, which isn't the case here.

Gassing is gassing. So are you saying the means of killing someone can be justified by the state's definition of the reason behind it? So as long as it is a punishment and not a method of genocide the method of killing is justified? Just asking not advocating one position over the other.

 

[TennTradition]

Gassing is gassing. So are you saying the means of killing someone can be justified by the state's definition of the reason behind it? So as long as it is a punishment and not a method of genocide the method of killing is justified? Just asking not advocating one position over the other.

My point was that you appear to be missing the true point of this argument. The allies didn't tell the Nazis that they would have stayed home if the Nazis had used a more humane method of killing the Jews. (Sidenote...I know that wasn't what drew us into war..but you get my point, I hope). The killing of innocent Jews was the inhumane part...it obviously wouldn't have mattered how it was done.

The issue you are discussing has more to do with the fact that killing the Jews was an international crime - killing judiciously convicted convicts is not - therefore, I don't think bringing up the comparison helps the discussion. That was my point.

 

[CSpindizzy]

I was bringing up the point that the actual method has been labeled as inhumane by Jewish groups including Holocaust survivors. I never mentioned anything about the reasons for using this method. If this method is considered inhumane then where is the outcry by this same group on this issue? You also missed my point that I am sticking with the method and not the reasoning behind it.

 

[TennTradition]

I was bringing up the point that the actual method has been labeled as inhumane by Jewish groups including Holocaust survivors. I never mentioned anything about the reasons for using this method. If this method is considered inhumane then where is the outcry by this same group on this issue? You also missed my point that I am sticking with the method and not the reasoning behind it.

No....you asserted that you were shocked that no Jewish groups had argued this was cruel and unusual punishment...you said nothing about it actually being labeled as cruel and unusual in your original post. The entire purpose of this thread is the method...not the reasoning. No one has ever argued that the problem with the Jewish mass murders was the method......what am I missing here?