Legal Research

Last Tuesday, the Supreme Court stayed the execution of Earl Wesley Berry.  Last Saturday, Eight Belles, the filly who fractured both her front ankles in the Kentucky Derby, was euthanized at the track.  What is the common denominator here? 

The Mississippi Death Row inmate's execution was stayed pending the Supreme Court's ruling on the constitutionality of Kentucky's form of lethal injection, the so-called "three drug cocktail."  Kentucky Death Row inmates are challenging the cocktail on the grounds that it violates the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.  The filly, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens suggested at a conference of the Sixth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals, died more humanely than do human beings who are injected with the lethal cocktail, because she did not receive one of the drugs found in the cocktail.