Today, the US Supreme Court decided to hear a case out of Kentucky that challenges the method of execution (lethal injection) as being cruel and unusual punishment. The argument of the inmates is that the mix of drugs (a sedative plus a paralytic plus a heart stopper) can result in needless pain and suffering. According to testimony of medical people on this issue, the sedative doesn't always work as predicted, the paralytic keeps the inmate from talking or moving, and the heart stopper is (by all accounts) like running acid through your viens. Prison officials are, of course, unable to get doctors to help them devise or supervise any method of execution, and have either relied on their own research or the advice of veterinarians to come up with this protocol.
Courts of Appeal have resisted addressing this question by either saying that the challenge to the procedure comes too early (before an execution is imminent) or comes too late (where the schedule for the execution does not permit a court sufficient time to consider the merits of the procedure).
Some of the Supreme Court's writings on the death penalty make me think that this will be a very interesting opinion. Will they end up comparing this procedure to the procedures used in the past? or to procedures currently in use around the world? Or maybe it will be a very nebulous standard that simply reveals that the Court feels that the inmates do or don't deserve to die this way at the hands of the government. In any event, this issue will tell us a lot about the people that make the decisions at the highest level of government.
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