In a divided decision released today, the United States Supreme Court has upheld Kentucky’s lethal injection process, rejecting claims by two convicted murderers and civil liberties lawyers that it was unconstitutionally cruel and unusual.
In the lead opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, “A state with a lethal injection protocol substantially similar to the protocol we upheld today would not create a risk [of severe pain] that meets [the] standard” for a stay of execution.
The California-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation had filed an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief in the case, encouraging today’s decision.
“The Court correctly held that a small possibility of an error during the lethal injection process or the availability of some alternative method of execution with a somewhat lower risk of causing pain, were not sufficient to render Kentucky’s protocol unconstitutional,” said Foundation Legal Director Kent Scheidegger. “Today’s decision should put an end to the de facto moratorium on the death penalty caused by legal challenges to this method of execution,” he added.
The inmates, Ralph Baze and Thomas Bowling, were both convicted and sentenced to death for double murders. In 1992, Baze killed a Kentucky County sheriff and deputy sheriff who were attempting to serve him with several felony warrants. Baze killed Sheriff Steve Bennett with three shots in his back. He fired two shots into Deputy Arthur Briscoe’s back and then finished him off with a bullet in the back of the head at point blank range.
Bowling killed a Lexington couple and wounded their two-year-old son in 1990. After ramming Eddie and Tina Earley’s car in a dry cleaning parking lot, Bowling left his car, shot both parents and the child, returned to his car, and drove away.
In 2004, both murderers filed lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the lethal injection process. The circuit court ruled that, with one exception, the state’s lethal injection protocol did not violate constitutional requirements. Last year, the Kentucky Supreme Court affirmed the lower court decision noting that the one problem had been corrected by the state following the lower court’s ruling.
After the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear the case last September, Baze told NBC News “if you are going to execute me, do it in a manner that is as humane as possible.”
In addition to their appointed legal counsel, groups who filed argument supporting the inmates included the American Civil Liberties Union; murderers sentenced to death in California, Missouri, Maryland and Florida; and an organization called Critical Care Providers and Clinical Ethicists.
Amicus curiae briefs supporting the state of Kentucky were submitted by the United States Solicitor General; a joint filing by the states of Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and Wyoming; and the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation.
The Foundation’s brief argued that there is no constitutional requirement that the execution of the death penalty be completely painless or involve the minimum achievable risk of pain. So long as the method is not cruel, the method is within constitutional limits. The Foundation also stressed that both the families of murder victims and law-abiding society suffer when the lawful sentence of a brutal murderer is delayed for years by legal challenges to a method of execution which was once promoted by the defense side as the humane alternative.
The Court’s majority opinion utilized arguments and research from the Foundation’s brief, which was also cited in Justice Ginsburg’s dissenting opinion.
