Lethal Injection Developments Spur Further Controversy in California and Missouri

Just days after a fed­er­al judge in California ruled that exe­cu­tions in that state must remain on hold as the lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures are care­ful­ly con­sid­ered, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8^th Circuit held that lethal injec­tion exe­cu­tions in Missouri may resume because their pro­ce­dures do not vio­late the 8^th Amendment’s ban on cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment.

U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel, who is pre­sid­ing over the ongo­ing legal chal­lenges in California, said there are a num­ber of ​“crit­i­cal defi­cien­cies” in how the state admin­is­ters exe­cu­tions. He acknowl­edged the need to issue a rul­ing in the case as soon as pos­si­ble, but said he would not make a deci­sion until he had all of the infor­ma­tion need­ed to eval­u­ate the pro­posed changes to California’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­cols. Fogel plans to vis­it the state’s rebuilt exe­cu­tion cham­ber dur­ing his review. He has sched­uled hear­ings for October 1 and 2, which means it is unlike­ly that exe­cu­tions will resume this year.

The unan­i­mous 8^th Circuit rul­ing issued by a 3‑judge pan­el on June 4 in Taylor v. Crawford found ​“no wan­ton inflic­tion of cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment in vio­la­tion of the 8^th Amendment” in Missouri​’s lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures. The rul­ing revers­es a District Court rul­ing last year that found an unnec­es­sary risk of ​“uncon­sti­tu­tion­al pain and suf­fer­ing when the lethal injec­tion drugs are admin­is­tered.” Taylor’s attor­neys said they would appeal the 8^th Circuit rul­ing. Ginger Anders, one of Taylor’s attor­neys, said the 8^th Circuit pan­el ​“relied sole­ly on the state’s writ­ten exe­cu­tion pro­to­col, ignor­ing the over­whelm­ing evi­dence that time and again the state’s actu­al per­for­mance of exe­cu­tions has devi­at­ed from its pub­lic rep­re­sen­ta­tions about the pro­ce­dures. The court’s exclu­sive focus on the writ­ten pro­to­col is par­tic­u­lar­ly trou­bling because no writ­ten pro­to­col can ensure that exe­cu­tions are per­formed humane­ly when the exe­cu­tion­ers are untrained or incom­pe­tent,” Anders said. ​“And that is pre­cise­ly the issue here — the state has proven that it can­not be trust­ed to employ com­pe­tent exe­cu­tion­ers.”

California and Missouri are among nine states where exe­cu­tions have been halt­ed while courts grap­ple with whether the lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures are con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly accept­able.
(Los Angeles Times, June 2 (CA case) and June 5, 2007 (MO case)). See Lethal Injection.