Supreme Court to consider Lethal Injection

[serialkiller]

Tuesday, September 25, 2007; 11:38 AM

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to consider the constitutionality of lethal injections in a case that could affect the way inmates are executed around the country.

The high court will hear a challenge from two inmates on death row in Kentucky _ Ralph Baze and Thomas Clyde Bowling Jr. _ who sued Kentucky in 2004, claiming lethal injection amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.

Baze has been scheduled for execution Tuesday night, but the Kentucky Supreme Court halted the proceedings earlier this month.

The court has previously made it easier for death row inmates to contest the lethal injections used across the country for executions. But until Tuesday, the justices had never agreed to consider the fundamental question of whether the mix of drugs used in Kentucky and elsewhere violates the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Baze and Bowling say the procedure inflicts unnecessary pain and suffering on the inmate.

The two inmates sued in 2004 and a trial was held the following spring. A state judge upheld the use of lethal injection and the Kentucky Supreme Court affirmed that decision. The appeal taken up Tuesday stems from that decision.

"This is probably one of the most important cases in decades as it relates to the death penalty," said David Barron, the public defender who represents Baze and Bowling.

All 37 states that perform lethal injections use the same three-drug cocktail. The three drugs consist of an anesthetic, a muscle paralyzer, and a substance to stop the heart. Death penalty foes have argued that if the condemned is not given enough anesthetic, he can suffer excruciating pain without being able to cry out.

U.S. District Judge Aleta Trauger ruled last week that Tennessee's method of lethal injection is unconstitutional and ordered the state not to execute a death row inmate. The state is still deciding whether to appeal the judge's ruling, but agreed to stop a pending execution.

A ruling from California in the case of convicted killer Michael Morales resulted in the statewide suspension of executions.

States began using lethal injection in 1978 as an alternative to the historic methods of execution: electrocution, gassing, hanging and shooting. Since the death penalty resumed in 1977, 790 of 958 executions have been by injection.

Baze, 52, has been on Death Row for 14 years. He was sentenced for the 1992 shooting deaths of Powell County Sheriff Steve Bennett and Deputy Arthur Briscoe.

Bennett and Briscoe were serving warrants on Baze when he shot them. Baze has said the shootings were the result of a family dispute that got out of hand and resulted in the sheriff being called.

[serialkiller]

Lawyer Andrew Cohen analyzes legal affairs for CBS News and CBSNews.com.

I make predictions about Supreme Court decisions about as often as the Justices agree unanimously on contentious issues, which is say, almost never. But I am prepared to go out on the legal limb in the lethal injection case out of Kentucky which the High Court yesterday agreed to consider and decide during the looming term.

By a 5-4 vote, I predict, with Justice Anthony Kennedy writing the majority opinion, the Court next spring will declare invalid the lethal injection procedures Kentucky and certain other states employ when they execute capital defendants. The decision will then force all "lethal injection" states to do what some already are doing, which is to revamp their execution protocols to ensure that the condemned are given the proper amount of the proper medications in the proper order so they don't endure "cruel and unusual punishment" they die.

The Court's most conservative quartet*Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Scalia, Thomas and Alito*will offer a stinging dissent that focuses upon the rights of states to determine for themselves their own execution protocols. And if Justice Scalia gets to write that dissent I'm fairly confident that we'll see a line or two about what he considers the "absurdity" of spending so much time m and effort ensuring that a death row inmate about to be killed in the name of the people is treated like a patient in the finest hospital in the world.

Okay, I'm done with my predictions. The case is titled Baze v. Rees and here is the Kentucky court ruling which now goes up on appeal. No one who follows the Court should be surprised that the Justices have agreed to resolve this issue.

The Justices in recent years have been consistently willing to limit the contours of capital punishment in America*they abolished, for example, a state's right to execute mentally retarded murders and also those who killed when they were younger than 18 years old. The trend, then, favors the condemned.

Moreover, literally from sea to sea, from California to Florida and many points in between, lower-court judges and state officials with increasing frequency have themselves stopped executions over concerns about lethal injections.

Florida Governor Jeb Bush, for example, suspended all executions in the Sunshine State late last year after prison officials botched the execution of a man named Angel Diaz.

Lethal injections also have been halted by decree or court order in Maryland, New Jersey, Delaware, and Tennessee. Other states, like Oklahoma, already have tried to change their injection protocols.

No matter which side of the capital punishment debate you find yourself on it's clear that prison officials and state legislators could use some guidance and certainty in this tussled area of the law. A uniform rule that increases the effectiveness of injection procedures*more drugs, more often, administered by people with more professional experience*would go along way in making this so. You heard it here first.

[carolinem]

Thanks to the CEDP for this information

Fellow abolitionists,

In a sign that the Supreme Court’s decision to take up the lethal injection issue could cause them to stay executions around the country, Texas has stopped the execution—for now—of Carlton Turner. This could have an impact nationwide if they grant stays until they rule on lethal injection next year. Also, Alabama has delayed an execution until it revises its lethal injection protocol


U.S. Supreme Court Spares Texas Killer

By MICHAEL GRACZYK
Associated Press Writer

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) -- The U.S. Supreme Court halted the execution of a man convicted of killing his parents in the nation's busiest death penalty state after already agreeing to review another state's lethal injection procedures.

The high court, which refused a similar appeal earlier this week from another Texas inmate, blocked state corrections officials Thursday night from executing 28-year-old Carlton Turner Jr. The order came less than two hours before the death warrant would have expired at midnight.

Turner's lawyers had linked his case with an appeal from two Kentucky inmates who argued that lethal injection is unconstitutionally cruel. Both states use similar injection procedures employing three drugs.

The justices on Tuesday agreed to consider the Kentucky appeal, and Turner's case was viewed as a barometer of whether capital punishment in Texas could be placed on hold while the Supreme Court considers that case.

"All I can say is all glory to God," Turner said when prison officials told him of the reprieve.

The brief order made no mention of the court's reasons for stopping the
punishment.

It followed a decision earlier Thursday by Alabama Gov. Bob Riley to stay the execution of a contract killer hours before it was to have been carried out so the inmate could be put to death using a new lethal injection formula the governor had ordered just a day before.

Turner would have been the 27th Texas inmate to be executed this year and the second this week.

After state courts refused to halt the punishment earlier Thursday, Turner's lawyers went to the Supreme Court.

In their appeal, his lawyers said that if the first of the three drugs failed to knock Turner unconscious "the inmate will experience excruciating pain and torture as the second and third drugs are administered."

The Supreme Court isn't expected to rule on the Kentucky case until some time next year.

Another Texas execution is scheduled for next week, one of at least three more set for this year. The status of that case was uncertain in light of Thursday's developments.

In their response to Turner's appeal, the Texas attorney general's office said that unlike the Kentucky case, Turner had a pending execution and the appeal questioning lethal injection was filed the day he was to die.

Only two days earlier, another Texas inmate was executed just hours after the justices announced their intention to review the Kentucky case.

Lawyers attributed that execution to the short period they had to prepare appeals for convicted killer Michael Richard. The justices did consider an appeal before turning it down, and Richard was executed after about a two-hour delay.

Turner was 19 when he shot Carlton Turner Sr., 43, and Tonya Turner, 40, several times in the head. Prosecutors said Turner had dragged the bodies through the house before dumping them in the garage, then had friends over that weekend for a party.

In Alabama, Riley said he issued the 45-day stay of Tommy Arthur's execution only to allow time for the new lethal-injection procedures to be put in place.

The changes are designed to make sure the inmate is unconscious when given drugs to stop the heart and lungs.

Riley said evidence is "overwhelming" that Arthur is guilty "and he will be executed for his crime." The governor encouraged the attorney general's office to ask the Alabama Supreme Court to set another execution date "as soon as possible."

Assistant Attorney General Clay Crenshaw said the request would be filed with the court Friday.

Before Riley issued his stay, state officials had said they intended to execute Arthur at 6 p.m. Thursday, even though the changes Riley ordered could not be implemented by then.

They said the procedures already in place were constitutional, though Arthur's attorney, Suhana Han, contended that Riley's order to change the protocol amounted to the state conceding that its execution procedure was deficient. Han did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment Thursday.

Arthur, 65, was sentenced to death for the Feb. 1, 1982, killing of Troy Wicker, 35, of Muscle Shoals. The victim's wife, Judy Wicker, testified she had sex with Arthur and paid him $10,000 to kill her husband, who was shot in the face as he lay in bed.

Arthur was visiting with his daughter when he learned of the stay in a call from his attorney, prison system spokesman Brian Corbett said.

Like Turner, Arthur had asked the U.S. Supreme Court for a stay pending its ruling on the Kentucky case. The Alabama Supreme Court had declined to grant a stay Wednesday.

The wife of Arthur's victim was given a life sentence for her part in the murder and paroled after 10 years behind bars.

In a statement, Peter Neufeld, co-director of the Innocence Project, urged Riley to use the next 45 days to allow DNA testing on evidence from Arthur's trial.

Another lethal-injection lawsuit, filed by a convicted ax murderer on death row on Delaware's death row, had been scheduled for trial Oct. 9. A federal judge postponed the trial Wednesday, citing the pending Supreme Court case.
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[carolinem]

Alabama, Rare Delay of Inmate’s Execution

In a fresh sign that the use of lethal injection in capital punishment faces an uncertain future, the Supreme Court <http://topics. nytimes.com/ top/reference/ timestopics/ organizations/ s/supreme_ court/index. html?inline= nyt-org> issued an unusual last-minute reprieve for a death-row inmate in Texas late last night.

Although the court gave no reason for its decision, the inmate, Carlton Turner Jr., had appealed to the court after it agreed on Tuesday to consider the constitutionality of lethal injection, the most commonly used method of execution in the United States. The decision suggests that until it issues a ruling on lethal injection, the court may be receptive to requests to delay such executions, at least for defendants whose cases raise no procedural issues.

“It’s an indication that the court believes there are real questions about what states are doing in this area,” said Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama <http://topics. nytimes.com/ top/news/ national/ usstatesterritor iesandpossession s/alabama/ index.html? inline=nyt- geo> , which opposes executions.

“What this signals is that the burden is now shifting to the states to do something about all these problems folks have been talking about.”

The vote on the stay of execution was not announced, but at least five justices needed to support it.

Earlier in the day, another rare stay of an execution came in Alabama, where Gov. Bob Riley said the state would not execute an inmate named Tommy Arthur while it came up with a new formula for lethal injection. State officials said they wanted to make sure prisoners were completely unconscious before they were killed.

The full effect of the Supreme Court’s decision is not yet known, but it may interrupt what appears to be emerging as a patchwork, state-by-state response to its decision Tuesday to look at whether lethal injection causes unnecessary suffering.
Some states, even ardent pro-death penalty ones like Alabama, are slowing down.

Others, like Texas, had been cruising at full speed; the state executed a prisoner a few hours after the court’s decision on Tuesday and was planning to proceed with its 27th execution of the year last night when the Court intervened. Eleven states have stopped lethal injections altogether, as litigation proceeds.

“It’s going to be a hodgepodge,” said George Kendall, a veteran civil rights lawyer in New York. “Some states will shut down, and in some it will be business as usual.”

All week, Texas officials had maintained that nothing had changed and that executions could proceed. Mr. Turner, 28, of Dallas, was convicted of having fatally shot his adoptive parents in 1998.

Another execution is scheduled in the state next week.
Steve Hall, executive director of the StandDown Texas Project, which advocates a moratorium on executions pending a state study, said Tuesday’s execution might have come too soon after the high court’s decision to review lethal injection for the justices to want to intervene in that case. Mr. Hall said he would welcome a stay of all other executions until the court rules on the constitutionality of lethal injection.

The Supreme Court’s decisions this week seemed certain to at least slow the pace, particularly in Southern states. Death penalty lawyers in North Carolina and Virginia, for instance, are already asking for delays both in executions and the development of new procedures for them.

“I think it will hold up quite a few executions,” said Richard C. Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit group opposed to capital punishment.

In Alabama, where politicians rarely challenge the death penalty, the state is developing a “consciousness awareness test” for inmates being executed, but state officials maintained that the action was unconnected to the Supreme Court decision.

“Somebody would come in and do something to assess consciousness, after the anesthesia is delivered,” Assistant Attorney General Clay Crenshaw said. For now, he said, "the consciousness- awareness is being done visually by the warden.”

In a separate case next week, a federal judge in Alabama will hear arguments from two death-row inmates that lethal injection is unconstitutional.

Jeff Emerson, a spokesman for Governor Riley, said the change in injection procedures was not related to that case but to a federal judge’s ruling in Tennessee last week that lethal injection in that state “presents a substantial risk of unnecessary pain,” and could “result in a terrifying, excruciating death.”

The judge halted a scheduled execution in Tennessee. Mr. Emerson said Alabama’s execution procedure was similar to Tennessee’s, and thus needed to be altered.

The cases set to be heard next week in Alabama, filed by two death row inmates, Willie McNair and James Callahan, are similar to the Kentucky case that led to the Supreme Court decision.
They argue that the condemned prisoner could suffer during the execution because of improper administration of the chemicals.