Death Row Inmates May Challenge Methods
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WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that death-row inmates can invoke a federal civil rights law to challenge the methods used by dozens of states to carry out lethal injections.
The unanimous ruling doesn’t directly affect the legality of lethal injections, which opponents say can create a risk of excruciating pain. Today’s decision gives inmates an additional avenue to challenge the procedure, which is used in all but one of the 38 death penalty states, and seek a different method of execution.
The ruling came in the case of Clarence Edward Hill, who was minutes away from execution in January when the Supreme Court intervened and agreed to hear his appeal. Hill, now 48, was convicted of the 1982 shooting death of Pensacola, Florida, police officer Stephen Taylor.
Hill points to a 2005 study that found in 21 of 49 executions the prisoner endured a feeling of suffocation and a burning sensation through the veins, followed by a heart attack. Of the 38 death-penalty states, all but Nebraska use lethal injection, and most use the same three chemicals as Florida.
Inmates in Florida are first injected with sodium pentothal, an anesthetic, followed by pancuronium bromide, which causes the lungs to shut down and paralyzes the body. The final chemical, potassium chloride, then induces a fatal heart attack.
Writing for the court, Justice Kennedy said Hill’s challenge “appears to leave the state free to use an alternative lethal injection procedure.”
Hill invokes a 135-year-old civil rights law. A lower court had said his case was barred because it was the functional equivalent of a habeas corpus petition, a procedural device used by inmates to challenge their convictions after appeal. Under American law, inmates generally can file only a single habeas petition in federal court – something Hill had already done.
The Supreme Court in May passed on a chance to directly address the constitutionality of the procedure, rejecting an appeal from a Tennessee inmate.
Florida began using lethal injections in 2000, averting a scheduled Supreme Court argument on the constitutionality of the state’s use of the electric chair. Florida now uses lethal injections unless the condemned person opts for the chair. The state has executed 60 people since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.