06-29-2015, 03:45 PM
U.S. Supreme Court Rules Death Drug Cocktail is Not "Cruel and Unusual Punishment"
The U.S. Supreme Court has been busy with high profile cases as of late.
Today it delivered a hotly debated 5-4 ruling that Oklahoma may continue to use a controversial lethal injection drug during executions.
This will make it difficult for plaintiffs from any state to claim that the death drug cocktail is "cruel and unusual punishment" and in violation of the 8th amendment to the Constitution.
The lawsuit was filed after the execution last year of Clayton Lockett last year. The prison officials claimed that it wasn't the drug that caused the inmate pain for 45 minutes, it was their improper or "botched" injection of it.
THE FINAL RULING
The conservative Justices contend that the Oklahoma death row prisoners who brought the matter to court "failed to identify a known and available alternative method of execution that entails a lesser risk of pain."
Justice Samuel Alito also wrote in the opinion in which Justices John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy concurred, "the prisoners also failed to show that a large dose of the controversial drug, Midazolam, entails a substantial risk of severe pain."
Citing previous rulings, Alito noted that while methods of execution have changed over the years, "[t]his Court has never invalidated a State’s chosen procedure for carrying out a sentence of death as the infliction of cruel and unusual punishment."
THE DISSENTING OPINIONS
In a scathing dissent from the court’s liberals, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan, suggested the high court’s ruling would allow prisoners to be "drawn and quartered, slowly tortured to death, or actually burned at the stake" by states that wished to put them to death.
Justice Breyer wrote that he believed it was "highly likely that the death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment" and called for the court to address that "basic question." Breyer suggested that since the use of the death penalty has declined over the years, it’s now an "unusual" punishment that been "imposed arbitrarily" in the past 40 years.
The justices have been sharply divided on the issue since the fiery opening oral arguments were heard in April. Alito accused anti-capital punishment activists of mounting "a guerrilla war on the death penalty." Kagan, meanwhile, said the pain caused by lethal injection when not mitigated by an effective anesthetic (Midazolam) was like "being burned alive."
Ref: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/29...70568.html
The U.S. Supreme Court has been busy with high profile cases as of late.
Today it delivered a hotly debated 5-4 ruling that Oklahoma may continue to use a controversial lethal injection drug during executions.
This will make it difficult for plaintiffs from any state to claim that the death drug cocktail is "cruel and unusual punishment" and in violation of the 8th amendment to the Constitution.
The lawsuit was filed after the execution last year of Clayton Lockett last year. The prison officials claimed that it wasn't the drug that caused the inmate pain for 45 minutes, it was their improper or "botched" injection of it.
THE FINAL RULING
The conservative Justices contend that the Oklahoma death row prisoners who brought the matter to court "failed to identify a known and available alternative method of execution that entails a lesser risk of pain."
Justice Samuel Alito also wrote in the opinion in which Justices John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy concurred, "the prisoners also failed to show that a large dose of the controversial drug, Midazolam, entails a substantial risk of severe pain."
Citing previous rulings, Alito noted that while methods of execution have changed over the years, "[t]his Court has never invalidated a State’s chosen procedure for carrying out a sentence of death as the infliction of cruel and unusual punishment."
THE DISSENTING OPINIONS
In a scathing dissent from the court’s liberals, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan, suggested the high court’s ruling would allow prisoners to be "drawn and quartered, slowly tortured to death, or actually burned at the stake" by states that wished to put them to death.
Justice Breyer wrote that he believed it was "highly likely that the death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment" and called for the court to address that "basic question." Breyer suggested that since the use of the death penalty has declined over the years, it’s now an "unusual" punishment that been "imposed arbitrarily" in the past 40 years.
The justices have been sharply divided on the issue since the fiery opening oral arguments were heard in April. Alito accused anti-capital punishment activists of mounting "a guerrilla war on the death penalty." Kagan, meanwhile, said the pain caused by lethal injection when not mitigated by an effective anesthetic (Midazolam) was like "being burned alive."
Ref: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/29...70568.html