Supreme Court Stays Execution in a Sign of a Broader Halt
Wednesday, October 31st, 2007
By Chris Fitzsimon
WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 — Moments before a Mississippi prisoner was scheduled to die by lethal injection Tuesday evening, the Supreme Court granted him a stay of execution and thus gave a nearly indisputable indication that a majority intends to block all executions until the court decides a lethal injection case from Kentucky next spring.
There were two dissenters, Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel A. Alito Jr., but neither they nor the majority gave reasons for their positions. Because only five votes are required for a stay of execution, it is not clear whether all the remaining seven justices supported it.
The stay will remain in effect until the full court reviews an appeal filed on Monday by lawyers for the inmate, Earl W. Berry, who is on death row for having killed a woman 20 years ago. While there is no schedule for that review, it almost surely will not take place until the court decides the Kentucky case, Baze v. Rees, which will be argued in January. The issue in that case is not the constitutionality of lethal injection as such, but rather a more procedural question: how judges should evaluate claims that the particular combination of drugs used to bring about death causes suffering that amounts to cruel and unusual punishment, in violation of the Eighth Amendment. (more…)
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