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Sixth Circuit judges issue dueling opinions over Ohio defendant's lethal injection challenge

By Douglas A. Berman

This afternoon, the Sixth Circuit officially denied en banc review of a panel's ruling that Kenneth Biros challenge to Ohio's old three-drug lethal injection execution protocol is moot.  That order is available here, and it is worth downloading because of concurring and dissenting opinions coming from Judge Sutton and Moore.  Perhaps not surprisingly, the concurring opinion from Judge Sutton suggests that Ohio's adoption of a new one-drug lethal injection protocol largely solves the asserted constitutional problems with Ohio's execution method.  Judge Moore's dissent from denial of en banc review takes issue with much of what gets said by Judge Sutton, and she ends her dissent with this assertion: "The rush to execution in this case is totally unwarranted, and thepanel?s justification is unsupportable...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on December 04, 2009 (boomark / email).