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« Last post by Frodo on Today at 01:11:48 am »Supreme Court blocks Alabama from executing inmate with method lower court found cruel and unusual
The Supreme Court on Thursday blocked Alabama from executing a man using nitrogen hypoxia, a relatively new method of carrying out the death penalty that experts say causes “air hunger” and that a federal court ruled violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
As is often the case in emergency death penalty appeals, the majority did not explain its reasoning. Three conservative justices – Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch – said they would have granted Alabama’s request and allowed the execution to take place. They also did not explain their reasoning.
The question for the Supreme Court was whether to throw out a decision from a federal district court this week that barred the state from executing Lee with nitrogen gas. That relatively new method is partly a response to pharmaceutical companies declining to allow their drugs to be used in lethal injections. Alabama has executed seven people using nitrogen-hypoxia.
But the method has drawn sharp criticism, and a federal appeals court in Atlanta concluded that the protocol presented “a substantial risk of serious harm — severe pain over and above death itself.” After that, a lower federal court concluded that the state could feasibly execute Lee with a firing squad, instead, and that method would significantly reduce the risk of harm.
The court’s ruling does not foreclose the possibility that Alabama could later attempt to execute Lee by firing squad, a method he had requested.
The Supreme Court on Thursday blocked Alabama from executing a man using nitrogen hypoxia, a relatively new method of carrying out the death penalty that experts say causes “air hunger” and that a federal court ruled violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
As is often the case in emergency death penalty appeals, the majority did not explain its reasoning. Three conservative justices – Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch – said they would have granted Alabama’s request and allowed the execution to take place. They also did not explain their reasoning.
The question for the Supreme Court was whether to throw out a decision from a federal district court this week that barred the state from executing Lee with nitrogen gas. That relatively new method is partly a response to pharmaceutical companies declining to allow their drugs to be used in lethal injections. Alabama has executed seven people using nitrogen-hypoxia.
But the method has drawn sharp criticism, and a federal appeals court in Atlanta concluded that the protocol presented “a substantial risk of serious harm — severe pain over and above death itself.” After that, a lower federal court concluded that the state could feasibly execute Lee with a firing squad, instead, and that method would significantly reduce the risk of harm.
The court’s ruling does not foreclose the possibility that Alabama could later attempt to execute Lee by firing squad, a method he had requested.
