The Lost Opportunity to End a Barbaric Practice

How much time did those on death row gain ? On April 16, the U.S. Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, decided by a 7-2 vote to allow the resumption of executions by lethal injection, the most widespread form of execution in the 37 states that continue to apply the death penalty. Lawyers for two men on death row in Kentucky, Ralph Baze and Thomas C. Bowling, had appealed to the Supreme Court in September, 2007, arguing that lethal injections are unconstitutional because they constitute a “cruel and unusual punishment,” which is forbidden by the eighth amendment to the constitution. All executions were halted while the Supreme Court considered the case, which in any case did not concern the constitutionality of the death sentence as such.

“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,” which consequently would be unconstitutional, explained the ultra-conservative Chief Justice, John Roberts.

This decision being in relation to Kentucky law, a number of opponents of the death penalty believe that lawyers for inmates on death row will be able to make appeals of the same kind as those filed by lawyers for Baze and for Bowling, all the more so there have been many blundered injections of the poisonous cocktail. In May, 2006, in Ohio, Joseph Clark’s death throes lasted an hour and a half after the first injection ! As he lay dying, he moaned : “It isn’t working. It isn’t working.” A year earlier, the British weekly medical journal The Lancet drew a damning balance on lethal injections. “The conditions in which death sentences are carried out in the United States do not even meet the criteria required of veterinarians when they put down animals,” The Lancet’s editorialist wrote. A number of states greeted the Supreme Court decision by rubbing their hands, hoping for a fast resumption of executions. This goes against the advances that had been made, beginning with a reduction in the number of executions (42 in 2007) and New Jersey’s abolition of the death penalty in December, 2007.

With 3,260 people on death row, the Supreme Court is “examining” the constitutionality of another case : Whether the rape of a child can be punished with the death sentence. This shows that the inhuman nature of the death sentence is not yet on the agenda of the very conservative Supreme Court.