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Lethal Injection Challenge Keeps Executions On Hold

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By MARK SHERMAN, The Associated Press

Published: January 7, 2008

WASHINGTON - A quarter-century has elapsed since the United States experienced as long a pause in executions as the one the Supreme Court has occasioned with its current examination of lethal injections.

No one has been put to death since Sept. 25 and the earliest that executions are likely to resume is in the summer. Forty-two people were executed in 2007, the lowest total in 13 years.

Florida and Ohio had recent executions in which workers had trouble inserting intravenous lines to deliver the drugs. As a result, the executions took much longer than usual, with strong indications the prisoners suffered severe pain.

When justices hear arguments today in a lethal injection case from Kentucky, their questions are unlikely to focus on whether capital punishment or the method of lethal injection is right or wrong.

Two death row inmates whose case is before the court are not asking to be spared execution or death by injection. Their argument is that there are ways to get the job done relatively pain-free.

So the court could delve into a highly technical, almost medical, discussion of how executions work in practice:

•Does the condemned prisoner receive enough anesthesia to knock him out?

•Do the people who insert intravenous lines know what they are doing?

•Is it best to use a combination of three drugs?

•Would it work better to deliver a fatal overdose of barbiturates? That is the method used by terminally ill people in Oregon and by veterinarians in most parts of the country who put animals to sleep.

The court will weigh what risk of pain is acceptable for prisoners being executed for horrific crimes and what standard judges should use in evaluating the risk.

Ralph Baze and Thomas Clyde Bowling Jr. were convicted of murder and sentenced to death in Kentucky. Baze was convicted of killing a sheriff and a deputy.

Bowling shot and killed a couple and wounded their 2-year-old son outside their dry-cleaning business.

The men, in a 2004 lawsuit, claimed lethal injection as done by Kentucky amounts to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment. The state's procedures - similar to those in three dozen states - "create a significant and unnecessary risk of inflicting severe pain that could be prevented by adoption of reasonable safeguards," their lawyers said.

The lawyers said other states routinely botch executions by using poorly trained people, complex procedures and dim lighting that makes it hard for the executioner to see.

Kentucky's only experience with lethal injection did not present any obvious problems.

The prisoners' lawyers said repeated executions "using the three-drug formula and Kentucky's inadequate procedures would produce torturous deaths in at least some cases."

The state defends its procedures, which courts have upheld.

The case could come down to a study of three drugs used to knock out, paralyze and kill prisoners. The argument against the drugs is that if the initial anesthetic fails, a third drug that stops the heart can cause excruciating pain masked by the second drug that paralyzes the prisoner and renders him unable to speak.

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