Supreme Court Hears Case Involving Lethal Injection
Friday, April 28th, 2006
By Chris Fitzsimon
WASHINGTON, April 26 — The Supreme Court on Wednesday had its first, but probably not its last, encounter with the legal questions surrounding execution by lethal injection.
Although the question before the court was the procedural one of how a challenge to lethal injection can be raised by a death row inmate who has exhausted the normal course of appeals, the intense argument showed that it was not easy to separate procedure from substance, at least with phrases like "excruciating pain" hanging in the courtroom air.
The case was brought by lawyers for Clarence E. Hill, who was convicted in 1983 of killing a police officer while fleeing a bank he had robbed in Pensacola, Fla.
Like every other death-penalty state except Nebraska, Florida executes by lethal injection. More precisely, like most other states, Florida uses a combination of three chemicals, one to anesthetize the inmate, a second to paralyze the muscles and a third to stop the heart.
Mr. Hill’s lawyers argue that the combination, as administered by the Florida Department of Corrections, places inmates at risk of "wanton and gratuitous pain," in violation of the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
Such a complaint would normally be brought as a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, the main pathway for a state inmate to get to federal court with a constitutional challenge to a conviction or sentence. But a 10-year-old federal law limits inmates to a single federal habeas petition, a quota Mr. Hill met long ago. (more…)
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