Court ruling sets stage for lethal injection battle

THE US Supreme Court opened the door yesterday to new constitutional challenges to lethal injection, the method used by most states and the federal government to execute death row inmates.

In an unanimous decision, the court allowed those condemned to die to make last-minute claims that the chemicals used are too painful — and therefore amount to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment.

Justices, in a separate 5-3 ruling, also made it easier for death row inmates to challenge their convictions with new evidence.

The court said Tennessee death-row inmate Paul Gregory House can use DNA evidence to try to get his conviction overturned in the 1985 murder of a neighbour.

The lethal injection ruling sets the stage for a nationwide legal battle over that subject, with the country’s 3,300 death row inmates armed with a new tool to contest how they are put to death. Justices have never ruled on the constitutionality of a specific type of execution.

The winner in the case was Florida death row inmate Clarence Hill, who was strapped to a gurney with lines running into his arms to deliver the drugs when the Supreme Court in January intervened and blocked the execution.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court, said that while Hill and other inmates can file special appeals, they will not always be entitled to delays in their executions.

“Both the state and the victims of crime have an important interest in the timely enforcement of a sentence,” he wrote.

Hill, convicted of killing a police officer, had run out of regular appeals so he went to court using a civil rights law claiming that his constitutional rights would be violated by Florida’s lethal injection drug protocol.

The court’s decision renews his bid to have Florida change its chemical combination.