A U.S. Supreme Court decision released Wednesday upheld Kentucky's use of lethal injection to execute criminals, ending a seven-month moratorium in 36 states that sanction capital punishment.
Seven of the nine justices rejected the challenge brought by two Kentucky inmates on death row. Ralph Baze and Thomas C. Bowling claimed that painful mistakes could occur while the first of the three injections is administered, thus violating a Constitutional amendment banning cruel and unusual punishment.
The Supreme Court has never rejected a challenge to an execution method.
At least 30 other states, including Texas, and the federal government administer the same three-drug cocktail. The first injection induces unconsciousness so that the painful effects of paralysis and cardiac arrest caused by the second and third injection are not felt.
The petitioners acknowledged that if the first injection was administered correctly, the death would be humane, according to Chief Justice John Roberts' majority opinion.
"[The petitioners] contend that the Eighth Amendment prohibits procedures that create an 'unnecessary risk' of pain," the opinion stated.
And the risk of pain during an execution is inherent, "no matter how humane," according to the opinion.
"It is clear, then, that the Constitution does not demand the avoidance of all risk of pain in carrying out executions," Roberts wrote.
However, he added, a state's refusal to change its method of execution when an alternative deemed more humane is created would violate the Eighth Amendment.
Justices Anthony Kennedy, Samuel Alito Jr., Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Stephen Breyer and John Stevens concurred with Roberts, though some expressed varying opinions.
Stevens added in his opinion that this case would not end the controversial use of lethal injections or the death penalty debate.
This was the only victory in the case for Scott Cobb, president of the Texas Moratorium Network.
"[Stevens] seems to be making a stance in saying he's ready to look at whether we should keep the death penalty, and he's never said that in the past," Cobb said. "Changes in Supreme Court justices during the next president's term might ban capital punishment all together."
He added that in Texas, it is three times more expensive to execute a prisoner than to award a life sentence without parole, because the court process is more tedious and time-consuming.
Texas leads the nation in executions: 405 inmates have been executed since 1976. Virginia, behind Texas, has executed 98, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
No inmates on death row are scheduled for execution in Texas, and Jason Clark, spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, said he is unsure when district attorneys will begin re-seeking capital punishment, a punishment supported by Gov. Rick Perry.
"Today's ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court affirms the method the state of Texas has in place to carry out the death penalty," Perry said in a statement.
When Kentucky adopted lethal injection as a form of execution in 1998, the injection protocol was left to officials in the Department of Corrections and was accepted without challenge or scientific aid, wrote Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter in the co-written dissenting opinion.
Medical personnel immediately leave the room after injecting the first round of drugs and do not ensure that the pain-dulling catheter is effective - unlike Florida, Missouri and other states, where wardens or medical personnel must determine that inmates are unconscious by physically shaking them, the justices wrote.
According to Ginsburg's opinion, officials from Kentucky argued that if the sedative were administered incorrectly, the prisoner "would be awake and screaming."
"That argument ignores aspects of Kentucky's protocol that render passive reliance on obvious signs of consciousness," she said.
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