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Federal judge upholds Missouri execution procedure

07/16/2008 A federal judge ruled Tuesday that Missouri's lethal-injection procedure is not cruel or unusual punishment, possibly ending a series of lawsuits that kept the state's death chamber closed for nearly three years. The ruling was issued by U.S. District Judge Fernando J. Gaitan Jr. in Kansas City. Missouri corrections officials said Tuesday they were preparing to end the life of John Middleton on July 30 as originally scheduled. The state Supreme Court had granted the convicted killer a reprieve last week, presumably to give the federal court to sort out challenges by five death-row inmates to Missouri's execution protocol."If the stay is vacated, the department will fulfill its statutory duty" to execute Middleton as scheduled, corrections spokesman Dean Watson wrote in an e-mail to the newspaper Tuesday...continue to full post

Full post as published by Lethal Injection on July 17, 2008 (boomark / email).