US set to resume executions following ruling

THE way has been cleared for the United States to resume executions after the Supreme Court upheld Kentucky’s use of lethal injection executions yesterday.

Executions have been on hold for nearly eight months.

The justices, by a 7-2 vote, turned back a constitutional challenge to the procedures in place in Kentucky, which uses three drugs to sedate, paralyse and kill inmates. Similar methods are used by roughly three dozen states.

“We . . . agree that petitioners have not carried their burden of showing that the risk of pain from maladministration of a concededly humane lethal injection protocol, and the failure to adopt untried and untested alternatives, constitute cruel and unusual punishment,” Chief Justice John Roberts said in an opinion that garnered only three votes. Four other justices, however, agreed with the outcome.

Roberts’ opinion did leave open subsequent challenges to lethal injection practices if a state refused to adopt an alternative method that significantly reduced the risk of severe pain.

The argument against the three-drug protocol is that if the initial anaesthetic does not take hold, the other two drugs can cause excruciating pain. One of those drugs, a paralytic, would render the prisoner unable to express his discomfort.