 |
 |
 |
 |
Helping Karl
The Daily Telegraph (UK)
April 2008
US Supreme Court Rejects Lethal Injection Challenge
A challenge to the most common form of lethal injection used in executions in the United States was rejected by the Supreme Court yesterday.
In a 7-2 vote, it threw out a claim by two inmates in Kentucky that a three-drug cocktail currently used amounted to unconstitutional "cruel and unusual punishment".
The challenge had placed a moratorium on executions in America from last September. But within two hours of the ruling, Timothy Kaine, the governor of Virginia, lifted the state's suspension.
Ralph Baze and Thomas Bowling had argued that if the injection process went wrong, it could result in horrific suffering, such as in botched executions in Florida and California where inmates took 30 minutes to die.
The inmates 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.
Critics of the triple injection method say that if the initial dose of anaesthetic is inadequate, the subsequent drugs can cause excruciating pain while the paralysing drug prevents the inmate from showing his discomfort.The court's ruling did not address the constitutional aspect of the death penalty, and left the door open to future challenges to lethal injection if a state refused to adopt an alternative method that was shown to significantly reduce the risk of severe pain.
Justice John Paul Stevens 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," he said.
David Fathi, the director of Human Rights Watch's US Programme, said the ruling was "not a green light for executions" and urged states not to "engage in an unseemly rush to execute in response to this decision".
The ruling "explicitly holds out the possibility that states may be obliged to adopt a more humane method", he said.
"So we would strongly urge all states to keep in place the moratorium and carefully review their execution protocols and consider alternatives that may result in a substantially less risk of suffering before resuming executions by lethal injection."
He added that "we have now gone more than six months without a single execution in this country for the first time in more than 25 years. And I think that demonstrates that the death penalty is not an essential part of our criminal justice system."
States began using the three-drug lethal injection method in 1978 as an alternative to electrocution, the gas chamber, hanging and shooting. In December, New Jersey became the first state in 40 years to abolish the death penalty.
Catherine Elsworth
Daily Telegraph
18th April 2008
