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Supreme Court To Hear Death Row Inmates' Lethal Injection Challenge

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By MARK SHERMAN, The Associated Press

Published: September 26, 2007

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to take a hard look at the method of lethal injection most states use to put inmates to death in a case that could further slow the pace of executions.

The high court will hear a challenge early next year from two inmates on death row in Kentucky - Ralph Baze and Thomas Clyde Bowling Jr. - who claim that lethal injection as practiced by the state amounts to cruel and unusual punishment, in violation of the Eighth Amendment.

The last time the court considered a challenge to a method of execution was in 1879, when it upheld the use of a firing squad in Utah.

Lethal injections, devised as a humane alternative to electrocution and the gas chamber, have come under attack in recent years amid reports that the three-drug cocktail doesn't always work as quickly as intended and that inmates are subjected to excruciating pain before they die.

The Supreme Court has previously made it easier for death row inmates to contest the lethal injections used across the country for executions.

But until Tuesday, the justices had passed up cases that posed the question of whether the mix of drugs and the way they are administered in three dozen states violate the Constitution. The court will hear arguments in the case on Jan. 7, said David Barron, the prisoners' lawyer.

The inmates' appeal was among 17 new cases the court accepted for its term that begins Monday.

At least 10 states have suspended use of the three-drug method after opponents alleged it was ineffective and cruel, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

The three consist of an anesthetic, a muscle paralyzer, and a substance to stop the heart. Death penalty foes have argued that if the condemned prisoner is not given enough anesthetic, he can suffer excruciating pain without being able to cry out.

Baze and Bowling, the condemned Kentucky prisoners, sued the state in 2004 and a trial was held the following spring. A state judge upheld the use of lethal injection and the Kentucky Supreme Court affirmed that decision.

Baze, 52, has been on death row for 14 years, after being sentenced for the 1992 shooting deaths of Powell County Sheriff Steve Bennett and Deputy Arthur Briscoe.

Bowling was sentenced to death for killing Edward and Tina Earley and shooting their 2-year-old son outside the couple's Lexington, Ky., dry-cleaning business in 1990.

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