For the first time since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Utah’s use of a firing squad in 1878, the court is preparing to weigh in on the legality of a particular method of execution.
The justices are scheduled to hear arguments today in a Kentucky case that could decide whether the lethal-injection procedures used by nearly every state with a death penalty law amount to cruel and unusual punishment.
But the court must first resolve the narrower legal issue of how to evaluate whether a state’s execution protocols — the series of steps that corrections officials take to administer fatal doses of three drugs intravenously — are unconstitutional.
Advocates on both sides of the debate say they hope that the case will settle an issue that has delayed executions nationwide and prompted half of all inmates facing imminent execution over the past two years to challenge the chemicals and procedures that would be used to kill them.
Attorneys for the Kentucky inmates contend that the fatal doses of three drugs used in lethal injections, if improperly administered, could cause prisoners to suffer an excruciatingly painful death.
That execution team members in many states are poorly trained increases the chances that something could go wrong, the inmates’ attorneys say.
Lawyers representing the state of Kentucky counter that the constitutional ban against cruel and unusual punishment does not require executioners to eliminate any risk of pain and suffering.
