In what I think is going to have a major impact on the death penalty, the Supreme Court has upheld allowing condemned prisoners to make last minute claims that the chemicals to be used in lethal injection are painful and therefore violate the Eight Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.
The decision came in a case from Florida called Hill v. McDonough. The decision is the follow-up to the court staying Hill’s execution in January.
Why do I think it’s going to have a major impact? I think it will because it adds one more hurdle that needs to be cleared. California, Maryland and Missouri have executions suspended due to similar issues surrounding lethal injection and now Florida can be added to that list with undoubtedly more states to follow. If the New Jersey commission studying the death penalty needed any additional ammunition, besides the state’s Attorney General saying the death penalty is unnecessary, to push it toward recommending abolition, it just got it. If New York and Kansas needed any additional incentive to not bother resurrecting their statutes which were declared unconstitutional, they just got it also and Illinois has one more reason to leave its executive moratorium in place.
Maybe I’m being overly optimistic, but that’s seven of the thirty-eight states with the death penalty sort of in limbo.
There may be hope for us yet.
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