Posted on 02/02/2006 9:31:26 PM PST by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court has triggered a debate over the mix of drugs used to carry out death sentences, with the justices delaying three executions and giving hope of eleventh-hour reprieves to other inmates.
Florida and Missouri were forced to cancel executions by lethal injection this week. Prisoners in California, Maryland and other states are trying to win stays this month.
An announcement from the high court last week is giving new hope for their appeals. The justices will consider whether a Florida inmate was wrongly barred from pursuing a claim that the lethal drugs cause pain in violation of the constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment.
The court's eventual decision will not answer broader questions about the appropriate way for states to carry out capital punishment, although some justices have expressed concerns about lethal injection.
The justices' intervention, even on the technical matter of how inmates can challenge lethal injection, energized lawyers who defend condemned prisoners.
"They are all jumping on the band wagon. They have an issue with more meat than they had before," said Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a pro-death penalty group.
"It's going to be harder to carry out an execution," he predicted.
Not all inmates have received reprieves.
A Texas prisoner was executed this week after losing Supreme Court appeals. Last week, the court voted 6-3 to let Indiana execute a man despite an appeals court decision clearing the way for the prisoner to challenge lethal injection.
"Everybody's scratching their heads trying to figure out what's going on," Scheidegger said.
Douglas Berman, a law professor at Ohio State University, said the court created "a ripple effect far beyond what they may have anticipated."
"What they've fundamentally done is guarantee that every execution is in a state of limbo and uncertainty - and led to more litigation," Berman said.
Florida probably will have significant support from other states when the appeal of inmate Clarence Hill is argued in April. Every state that has capital punishment, with the exception of Nebraska, uses lethal injection. Nebraska only uses the electric chair.
Florida was one of the last states to switch to lethal injection, ending the sole use of its electric chair, known as "Old Sparky," after the Supreme Court said in late 1999 that it would consider if the method was unconstitutional.
Lethal injection was considered more humane than the electric chair, firing squad, gas chamber or hanging. Over the years, however, studies have shown that the drug combination used in many states may not adequately sedate inmates before administration of the final medicine that causes their heart to stop.
The Supreme Court last considered a related case in 2004. An Alabama death row inmate had claimed that his damaged veins would require prison doctors to cut deep into his flesh to deliver the chemicals. He won the right to pursue his claim in a limited ruling by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and still is pressing his case.
O'Connor retired on Tuesday and was replaced by Justice Samuel Alito, whose first case was the death penalty appeal from Missouri. He broke ranks with the court's conservatives, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, who voted to allow the execution of Michael Taylor. They were outvoted by Alito and the court's more liberal members.
"It's a reasonable, cautionary vote. It doesn't necessarily indicate leanings toward death penalty defendants," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes capital punishment. "But at least he's going to be his own person."
That's it, time to go back to simply hanging or firing squad them...you know like the founders considered appropriate method for the adminstration of justice....
Is Alito wearing Sandra Day O'Connor's panties? So far the two newest SCOTUS justices have been a wash; and it appears nothing has been gained for conservatives with these two.
It will be very interesting to see what they do when crunch time comes to overturn Roe. Here's hoping and praying they'll do what we hoped they were placed there to do, but neither man strikes me as being truly 'strict constructionists' who are courageous enough to rule against Roe v Wade precedent. Roberts said that Roe was "settled law", and that his faith will never play a role in his decision making. Alito felt it necessary to show the world that he's an individualist who won't necessarily stand beside the other conservative Justices.
PING
This is just plain stupid.
The first drug they inject puts you to sleep, like the drug used for surgeries. It doesn't hurt. After a mega dose of that, if it does already kill you, a whole series of other drugs are injected that do.
This was a dumb move by Alito. Unless he really is stupid and wasn't aware what those drugs do.
personally I would like to see them hang, and feel that snap of their neck for that instant. or better yet, suffer the same death as their victims for true 'eye for an eye' justice.
If the court is going to schedule a case on the subject, it would make sense to stay executions pending the outcome. Otherwise the court would find it difficult to avoid accusations that when they do hear the case they're biased by a desire to avoid being seen as having made a fatal mistake.
Better to grant cert, issue the necessary stays, and then put the issue to rest than to simply deny cert while leaving it open.
I just don't get it. Since when is the death penalty, or any other punishment, constitutionally required to be pain free. Life isn't pain free. The slighest twinge of pain does not constitute torture, cruelty, or 'unusual punishment'.
Expect this to be the final ruling from the court, putting this issue to rest.
Just give 'em a massive overdose of Heroin..
Comforting to find a rational analysis among the knee jerk reactions.
Like I have said before, Overdose them on Heroin. They love it. Just leave the needle in the cell and half of them will give itto themselves.
The Constitution bans punishment that is both cruel and unusual. If it hurts for a minute or two, in rare circumstances, whoopdie doo.
I agree that we need to be very, very careful who is executed, to avoid killing the wrong guy. But all this hand wringing over how to execute a merciless, violent monster is a monumental waste of energy, IMO.
Eye for an eye ~ Bump!
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