awakening2lite
04-16-2008, 12:54 PM
WASHINGTON -- In a case closely watched in Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court today upheld the use of lethal injection for executing convicted killers in Kenucky.
The 7-2 decision clears the way for 36 states, including Texas, to resume lethal injections. Those executions had been delayed for more than six months since the high court first agreed to hear the case. The case splintered the Supreme Court into five factions and no single opinion garnered a majority.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that Kentucky's form of execution is ``believed to be the most human available.''
Roberts wrote that throughout history, challenges to executions as ``cruel and unusual'' have consistently failed. However, he wrote that ``society has nonetheless steadily moved to more humane methods of carrying out of capital punishments. The firing squad, hanging, the electric chair and the gas chamber have in turn given way to more humane methods, culminating in today's consensus on lethal injection.''
Those seeking to strike down lethal injection as a violation of the 8th Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment ``have not carried their burden of showing that the risk of pain from maladministration of a concededly humane lethal injection protocol, and the failure to adopt untried and untested alternatives, constitute cruel and unusual punishment,'' Roberts wrote.
He was joined by Justices Samuel Alito and Anthony Kennedy.
Justices John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer, who normally vote with the more liberal bloc, concurred in the Roberts' judgment but not his reasoning.
Justice Antonin Scalia, joined by Clarence Thomas, filed a separate opinion largely consisting of a rebuttal to Stevens' complaints about capital punishment.
Justices David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg filed a strong dissent. Ginsburg said it is ``undisputed'' that the second and third drugs used by Kentucky ``would cause a conscious inmate to suffer excrutiating pain.''
She asked Kentucky courts to consider safeguards to prevent condemned killers from suffering severe discomfort in the moments in their final moments of life. She asked the state to ensure a prisoner is unconscious when injected with the death-inducing drug.
The case involved a challenge to the lethal injection process in Kentucky, where state officials mandate the use of three drugs to sedate, paralyze and eventually kill inmates. Texas is one of the three dozen states to employ similar death regimens. Unlike Texas, which has executed more than 400 inmates by the needle since the return of capital punishment in 1982, Kentucky has conducted just one execution by lethal drugs.
The two inmates challenging the decision said that two of the drugs used in Kentucky can cause excrutiating pain if the first drug, an anesthetic, does not work effectively. They argued that the condemned killer cannot express a sense of pain because they are sedated. They asked to die instead by injection of a lethal dose of a barbiturate that causes no pain
The fractured court's findings left open future challenges to lethal injection practices if a state refused to adopt an alternative method that significantly reduced the risk of severe pain.
Harris County killer Michael Wayne Richard, 48, condemned for the 1986 rape-murder of Hockley nurse Marguerite Dixon, was the last prisoner executed in the nation before scheduled executions were put on hold.
Richard was executed on Sept. 25, the day the high court agreed to hear the Kentucky case. Richard's lawyers attempted to obtain a stay for their client after the court signaled that it would hear the Kentucky case, but experienced computer problems that delayed submitting their petition.
The attorneys asked the state court of appeals clerks office to extend its hours to accept the appeal, but court of appeals presiding Justice Sharon Keller ordered the office to close at its usual time.
The action prompted a national outcry against Keller and resulted in a written policy governing such situations in the future.
Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokeswoman Michelle Lyons today said that all scheduled executions were placed on hold while the high court deliberated and must be reset by the appropriate state district judges.
Twenty-six condemned killers were executed in Texas last year before the Supreme Court agreed to hear the Kentucky case.
In Houston today, David Atwood, director of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, expressed disappointment in the court's decision.
"I don't know that it would have had a big impact on Texas anyway," he said, "because we are so determined to go forward with executions in this state. I personally think there are serious problems with how the death penalty is administered in Texas that should cause us to stop executions. These are problems with the legal system that we have seen again and again."
Dianne Clements, director of Justice for All, a crime-victims' advocacy group, said the court's ruling "settles the issue once and for all.
"Another obstacle is down and execution is still in place," she said. "Lethal injection is not cruel and unusual."
source: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5705260.html
The 7-2 decision clears the way for 36 states, including Texas, to resume lethal injections. Those executions had been delayed for more than six months since the high court first agreed to hear the case. The case splintered the Supreme Court into five factions and no single opinion garnered a majority.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that Kentucky's form of execution is ``believed to be the most human available.''
Roberts wrote that throughout history, challenges to executions as ``cruel and unusual'' have consistently failed. However, he wrote that ``society has nonetheless steadily moved to more humane methods of carrying out of capital punishments. The firing squad, hanging, the electric chair and the gas chamber have in turn given way to more humane methods, culminating in today's consensus on lethal injection.''
Those seeking to strike down lethal injection as a violation of the 8th Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment ``have not carried their burden of showing that the risk of pain from maladministration of a concededly humane lethal injection protocol, and the failure to adopt untried and untested alternatives, constitute cruel and unusual punishment,'' Roberts wrote.
He was joined by Justices Samuel Alito and Anthony Kennedy.
Justices John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer, who normally vote with the more liberal bloc, concurred in the Roberts' judgment but not his reasoning.
Justice Antonin Scalia, joined by Clarence Thomas, filed a separate opinion largely consisting of a rebuttal to Stevens' complaints about capital punishment.
Justices David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg filed a strong dissent. Ginsburg said it is ``undisputed'' that the second and third drugs used by Kentucky ``would cause a conscious inmate to suffer excrutiating pain.''
She asked Kentucky courts to consider safeguards to prevent condemned killers from suffering severe discomfort in the moments in their final moments of life. She asked the state to ensure a prisoner is unconscious when injected with the death-inducing drug.
The case involved a challenge to the lethal injection process in Kentucky, where state officials mandate the use of three drugs to sedate, paralyze and eventually kill inmates. Texas is one of the three dozen states to employ similar death regimens. Unlike Texas, which has executed more than 400 inmates by the needle since the return of capital punishment in 1982, Kentucky has conducted just one execution by lethal drugs.
The two inmates challenging the decision said that two of the drugs used in Kentucky can cause excrutiating pain if the first drug, an anesthetic, does not work effectively. They argued that the condemned killer cannot express a sense of pain because they are sedated. They asked to die instead by injection of a lethal dose of a barbiturate that causes no pain
The fractured court's findings left open future challenges to lethal injection practices if a state refused to adopt an alternative method that significantly reduced the risk of severe pain.
Harris County killer Michael Wayne Richard, 48, condemned for the 1986 rape-murder of Hockley nurse Marguerite Dixon, was the last prisoner executed in the nation before scheduled executions were put on hold.
Richard was executed on Sept. 25, the day the high court agreed to hear the Kentucky case. Richard's lawyers attempted to obtain a stay for their client after the court signaled that it would hear the Kentucky case, but experienced computer problems that delayed submitting their petition.
The attorneys asked the state court of appeals clerks office to extend its hours to accept the appeal, but court of appeals presiding Justice Sharon Keller ordered the office to close at its usual time.
The action prompted a national outcry against Keller and resulted in a written policy governing such situations in the future.
Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokeswoman Michelle Lyons today said that all scheduled executions were placed on hold while the high court deliberated and must be reset by the appropriate state district judges.
Twenty-six condemned killers were executed in Texas last year before the Supreme Court agreed to hear the Kentucky case.
In Houston today, David Atwood, director of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, expressed disappointment in the court's decision.
"I don't know that it would have had a big impact on Texas anyway," he said, "because we are so determined to go forward with executions in this state. I personally think there are serious problems with how the death penalty is administered in Texas that should cause us to stop executions. These are problems with the legal system that we have seen again and again."
Dianne Clements, director of Justice for All, a crime-victims' advocacy group, said the court's ruling "settles the issue once and for all.
"Another obstacle is down and execution is still in place," she said. "Lethal injection is not cruel and unusual."
source: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5705260.html