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The Supreme Penalty

By Kent Scheidegger et al.

Erin Sheley has an interesting column in the Weekly Standard on the two death penalty cases before the Court this term. As she puts it: In Baze, two Kentucky death row inmates--one convicted of murdering two police officers, the other of wounding a two-year-old boy and shooting his parents to death in a parking lot--challenge the three-chemical formula used by 35 states to perform lethal injection. While the defendants do not challenge the practice of lethal injection itself, they argue that the particular cocktail in use is "highly vulnerable to multiple errors, any one of which will result in the infliction of agonizing pain." They argue that any death penalty procedure creating "unnecessary risk" of suffering should be deemed cruel and unusual, and urge that "an execution procedure creates unnecessary risk where, taken as a whole, it presents a significant risk of causing severe pain that could be avoided through the use of a reasonably available alternative or safeguard...continue to full post

Full post as published by Crime and Consequences on March 27, 2008 (boomark / email).