The Supreme Court’s decision to rule on whether the most common means of inflicting death upon a condemned prisoner amounts to “cruel and unusual punishment,” in defiance of the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, provides the nation’s top judges with their second chance this year to offer an opinion on how far the law protects the sanctity of life.

Although the legality of capital punishment is not in doubt, the court will nonetheless have to make judgments about exactly how much the state should intervene in protecting the quality of life, a subject also debated in Gonzales v. Carhart, the landmark case decided in April in which the court amended the application of laws governing abortions.

Prominent in the court’s ruling at that time was that, notwithstanding the arguments that led the Supreme Court to legalize abortions in the 1973 judgment Roe v. Wade, some aspects of conducting a late-term abortion were so barbaric and injurious to the fetus that they should be forbidden.

The case provided an insight into the newly constituted court, which has been joined by two conservative judges, Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito, appointed by President Bush.

Inevitably, the case the court has chosen as a test of the current capital punishment procedure will spark an intense partisan political debate and place capital punishment itself on trial. The sanctity of life governed by the Sixth Commandment, “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” is at the core of Christian and Jewish beliefs and is central to Roman Catholic doctrine. The sanctity of life underpins arguments against not only abortion and capital punishment but also euthanasia.

The fine legal line that the court has agreed to draw, on whether the mechanics of administering death by lethal injection amounts to additional “cruel and unnecessary” punishment outside the laws allowing capital punishment, is certain to raise the issue of to what extent and even whether the legal taking of life by the state is appropriate.

Of keen interest will be whether the Supreme Court is as concerned about protecting the quality of life and rights of an individual enjoyed by a person at the beginning of life, as a fetus, as the protection of the quality of life and the rights of the individual at the end of life, even when the state has sanctioned the end of that life and the life belongs to a murderous criminal. The current case hinges on how the state behaves when taking a life in cold blood.

The case will attract intense worldwide attention, particularly in Europe, where the European Union has enacted a wholesale ban on capital punishment, to the extent that suspected terrorists and murderers may not be extradited to America so long as they might face death by judicial process.

The case the justices have chosen to adjudicate upon, Baze v. Rees, leaves in no doubt that those condemned to death were sentenced appropriate to the laws governing murder in their own state, Kentucky. The two prisoners who brought the case, Ralph Baze and Thomas Clyde Bowling Jr., are undoubtedly guilty of taking the lives of others. Baze murdered a sheriff and his deputy; Bowling shot to death a young couple and wounded their 2-year-old son.

Whether the two deserve to die for their crimes is not an issue before the court. Instead, the justices must ponder whether the injection of three chemicals in turn — one, a barbiturate, to remove consciousness; a second to paralyze; and a third, potassium chloride, to ensure death — provides the conditions that might allow a prisoner to endure unnecessary agonizing pain.

While the law in most states allows the taking of life as a punishment, additional “cruel and unnecessary punishment” is constitutionally forbidden, even in the last remaining moments of a prisoner’s life. The wording of the Eighth Amendment, which is part of the Bill of Rights, is: “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”

A number of previous capital cases have tested the laws to the limit, as a result of which the method of taking life has had to be changed. Hanging, asphyxiation by gas, and electrocution have been largely deemed to provide an ancillary and therefore wholly illegal “cruel and unnecessary punishment” and have over time been replaced by the three-chemical method.

However, there have also been a string of cases in which the injection method has proved to have been so drawn out, or so incompetently administered, or merely inflicted pain, notwithstanding the prisoner’s inability through paralysis to complain, that the injection method itself has in some jurisdictions been discredited and abandoned.

The petition on behalf of the two condemned Kentucky men asks the Supreme Court to rule on whether the three-injection method is or is not legally appropriate. “No person should face the risk of excruciating pain and suffering merely because of the state or federal jurisdiction in which the person is condemned. … This court can easily provide guidance and resolve the confusion over the applicable legal standard,” it reads.

In response, the state of Kentucky’s court decision argues, “Conflicting medical testimony prevents us from stating categorically that a prisoner feels no pain,” but that “The prohibition is against cruel and unusual punishment, and does not require a complete absence of pain.”

One of the minutiae the justices will have to ponder is whether the word “and” in the phrase “cruel and unnecessary” means that a punishment may be cruel or may be unnecessary but may not be both.

Twelve states — Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin — and the District of Columbia have no capital punishment statute.