Death-row inmates challenged Oklahoma’s use of the drug midazolam — at issue in several botched executions in 2014.
Sue Ogrocki / AP
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that the use of the controversial lethal injection drug midazolam in executions does not violate the Constitution.
In a 5-4 opinion, Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the court that Oklahoma prisoners failed in their challenge because they didn't provide evidence of an alternative method of execution and because the Supreme Court found no clear error in the trial court's ruling that midazolam "is highly likely to render a person unable to feel pain during an execution."
The challenge to Oklahoma's use of the drug followed the April 2014 execution of Clayton Lockett. After having been declared unconscious after the midazolam injection — the first drug in the state's three-drug execution protocol — Lockett began moving on the gurney and shaking uncontrollably. Although the execution was stopped, Lockett died of a heart attack.
The questions about the use of midazolam in executions arose over the course of 2014, when executions in several states where the drug is used — in Ohio and Arizona, in addition to Oklahoma — resulted in the execution taking longer than expected and reports that the person being executed either was still moving or otherwise showed signs of remaining conscious during the execution.
Although the doses and drug pairings varied from state to state, each used midazolam in an attempt to sedate the inmate.
In the oral arguments over the case brought by remaining death-row inmates in Oklahoma in April, the clear and strong division among the Supreme Court justices over the use of the death penalty was clear.
Justice Samuel Alito criticized what he called that "guerrilla war against the death penalty" by death penalty opponents, whose efforts are "reducing access to drugs" — resulting in the need for states to rely on untested drugs like midazolam.
Alito, pressing the inmates' lawyer, later asked incredulously whether "there are circumstances in which burning [a person] alive would not be a violation of the Eighth Amendment" ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Justice Elena Kagan, who had raised the issue in the first place, shot back: "You see, but potassium chloride is burning somebody alive. It's just doing it through the use in a of a drug."
The case has been closely watched by states whose execution protocols might need to be changed depending on the case's outcome and also by death penalty opponents, who are looking for signals of the court's broader views on the continued use of the death penalty.
Source BuzzFeed - Politics http://ift.tt/1HsvFCP
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