Patterico's Pontifications

11/23/2007

Another Kentucky Death Penalty Case

Filed under: Law — DRJ @ 7:56 pm



[Guest post by DRJ]

Another Kentucky inmate is challenging the death penalty but this time the challenge is to the method of execution rather than its constitutionality:

“A Kentucky death-row prisoner claims that giving a condemned inmate a sedative on the day of execution interferes with the drug cocktail used in lethal injections.

The lawsuit by Gregory L. Wilson, 51, is a new challenge to Kentucky’s execution method after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments from two other death row inmates who claim it amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. The high court has allowed just one execution since agreeing to hear arguments in January in a case that could affect how executions are carried out in 36 states.

Wilson’s new lawsuit challenges the method rather the constitutionality of Kentucky’s execution procedure. Sedatives interfere with the effectiveness of sodium thiopental, a fast-acting barbiturate used during execution that renders an inmate unconscious, Wilson’s attorneys claim in the challenge filed Wednesday in U.S. District court in Frankfort. The other two drugs used are pancuronium bromide, which causes paralysis, and potassium chloride, which causes cardiac arrest.

Wilson’s attorneys said the state gives a condemned inmate a Valium as a sedative – even if the inmate refuses. An offer of Valium or another anti-anxiety drug are available in at least 19 of the country’s 38 death penalty states.”

Kentucky lets death row inmates who were sentenced before 1998 choose between lethal injection and electrocution. Wilson, who was sentenced to die in 1988, also claims that Kentucky does not provide enough information to let death row inmates make an intelligent choice between the two methods. Thus, Wilson’s suit seeks to “force the state to show inmates its now-secret protocols for electrocution and lethal injection.”

Death penalty cases have become battlegrounds between those who believe the death penalty should not be allowed and those who believe it should. The current legal trend is to limit the scope of the death penalty as illustrated by Supreme Court cases like Roper v Simmons (death penalty does not apply to persons under 18) and Atkins v. Virginia (mentally retarded persons may not be executed). The Kentucky cases are a continuation of this trend.

I think courts will continue to limit the death penalty. In the short term, this likely means there will be strict limits placed on the methods used to execute inmates, but the death penalty may be abolished in the long term. In the meantime, I hope the discussion covers not only whether the death penalty is cruel and inhuman unusual but also the reasons why we have it.

— DRJ

12 Responses to “Another Kentucky Death Penalty Case”

  1. I would so not protest if I was him. Frankly, I’d prefer a firing squad or hanging. But I guess I’m just old fashioned.

    Christoph (92b8f7)

  2. As an “Originalist”, I believe this is all hokum.

    The death penalty was in common use at the time of the writing and ratification of the Constitution; and yet, no attempt by the author(s) to abolish it was made.

    If the death penalty was considered “cruel and unusual”, it would have been stricken by the enactment of the Bill of Rights. Furthermore, no mention was made in the debates over the Constitution, and/or the Bill of Rights, that any of the then common methods of execution in the new United States were thought to be banned by the 8th Amendment.

    Thugs still kill innocents in the same depraved manner that they have throughout history (some with added twists and kinks), but we are to believe that the dispatch of those thugs (or the manner in which we do so) is now “cruel and unusual”. What is “cruel and unusual” historically, is to allow these cretins to survive at all.

    Just because we consider ourselves “more civilized” than our founders, does not make it so, and does not allow you to throw away my rights.

    It is when we no longer have the stomach for defending our society, that we hand it over to those who intend to destroy it.

    If you can’t stand firm against the horde, please step aside so that a better can take your place!

    Another Drew (8018ee)

  3. Christoph #1 wrote,

    I would so not protest if I was him.

    I give him the benefit of the doubt that “so” was for emphasis and he just forgot to italicize it. However, the sentence would otherwise earn an “F” in remedial English. Proper grammar is, “I would so not protest if I were he”.

    nk (09a321)

  4. The 8th Amendment prohibits “cruel and unusual” punishments, not “cruel” or “inhumane” punishments.

    As the Supreme Court has repeatedly found, when the 8th Amendment was adopted, the death penalty was not considered “cruel” or “unusual”, so what is the basis to argue that it violates the 8th Amendment today?

    If the death penalty opponents were intellectually honest, they would take up this issue as an amendment to the Constitution. Go get 2/3 or each house of Congress and 3/4 of the State Legislatures to ban the death penalty and the debate is settled.

    Short of that, go away.

    wls (fa26e7)

  5. WLS,

    Thanks for pointing that out. I have no defense for my mistake … except Thanksgiving over-eating, but I don’t think that helps me much.

    As for the basis to contest the death penalty in recent cases, I know you know this but I’ll say it anyway: Liberal Justices cite “evolving standards of decency” and foreign law as support for a change in what “cruel and unusual” means.

    DRJ (973069)

  6. So if he didnt want to be on reath row he should never have murdered anyone and frankly his stupid lawsuit should be tossed out and the exicution carried out right now and no more 14 to 15 years of those stupid appeals

    krazy kagu (1f0194)

  7. Patrick,
    Funny about the Valium.It’s the only drug I know immortalized in two songs.Mother’s Little ‘Elper was based on it and it’s mentioned in”Take a Walk on the wild Side”,as in-‘ Valium would have helped that crash’.
    Secondly,I wrote for a large amount(100mg) yesterday,for patients who needed to put down Rover.We call it a “Death Burger”

    corwin (5631ee)

  8. DRJ — my comment wasn’t meant to be personal, and I don’t think of you as a death penalty opponent, so that wasn’t aimed at you either.

    This debate is just so tiring and intellectually dishonest. I refuse to even consider the “evolving standards of decency” trope since the Supreme Court doesn’t make laws.

    wls (fa26e7)

  9. Its truly sad how corrupt our courts have become. Why is it that judges believe their determination is best suited for creating society in the fashion that is closest to utopia. Isn’t that what religious people are for?

    As I recall keel hauling was popular till the mid 19th century in the Navy along with 100 lashes of the cat of nine tails, and these were not capital punishments. Actually I think we should confine the condemned to watch Michael Moore movies in a small confined room till they beg to be boiled in oil.

    Thomas Jackson (bf83e0)

  10. Something has always stuck me as odd about those who complain about the “pain and suffering” supposedly caused by lethal injection. Over my lifetime, I have gone under the surgeon’s knife twice, an appendectomy and rotator cuff repair, and both operations required anesthesia. In the last 12 years, I have undergone four colonoscopies, all of which required sedation. Not once in any of these procedures did I feel any pain what so ever, zero, zip nada. Then I think about my father who underwent heart bypass surgery, which required his chest to be ripped open and on the operating table for 5 hours and yet he felt no pain, at least during the operation. Given the effectiveness of modern anesthesia, it just eludes me how it is that inserting a hypodermic needle in the arm of the condemned and putting them to sleep can be construed as cruel and unusual. I’m not arguing for or against capital punishment here, just that the argument by the condemned man in Kentucky and anywhere lethal injection is used just doesn’t pass the common sense smell test. Please, someone enlighten me.

    JoeH (2c1683)

  11. JoeH,

    It’s partly an argument designed to attack the death penalty but there is a medical issue involved. Reportedly, many death row inmates were long-time drug users prior to incarceration. It can be very hard to get an IV needle in a drug user’s arm and/or to keep it there without infiltrating, e.g., blowing the vein. Thus, the medicine that was successfully injected into your and your father’s veins via your arms or legs may be difficult or impossible to successfully inject in a former drug user. The answer is to do a cut down where you put a port into a larger vein but that is a surgical procedure and it adds other complications, including finding qualified professionals willing to do the procedure.

    DRJ (973069)

  12. including finding qualified professionals willing to do the procedure.

    In a nation where 1.5 million abortions are performed every year, this statement just drips with irony.

    Steverino (c33cc5)


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