A Franklin County, Kentucky, court will hear argu­ments begin­ning April 18 to deter­mine whether the state’s lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures rise to the lev­el of cru­el­ty that is for­bid­den by the U.S. and state con­sti­tu­tions. In November 2004, the same court cit­ed ques­tions about the lethal injec­tion process when it issued a stay of exe­cu­tion for Thomas Clyde Bowling, Jr. just days before his sched­uled exe­cu­tion. Attorneys for Bowling and death row inmate Ralph Baze, who is also a plain­tiff in the law­suit, now plan to present an anes­the­si­ol­o­gist, a phar­ma­col­o­gist, and 18 oth­er wit­ness­es whose tes­ti­mo­ny will chal­lenge the state’s lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures, the drugs used in these exe­cu­tions, and the train­ing of the per­son­nel who car­ry them out. Currently, Kentucky uses a series of three drugs dur­ing lethal injec­tions that are designed to relax and put inmates to sleep before killing them. Bowling’s attor­ney plans to present evi­dence that the first drugs do not get into the blood stream before the killing drugs are admin­is­tered, lead­ing to a ​“death that is pure tor­ture.” Among the evi­dence pre­sent­ed will be an autop­sy report for Eddie Lee Harper, the state’s first and only inmate to be exe­cut­ed by lethal injection.

(Associated Press, April 14, 2005). Similar con­cerns about lethal injec­tion were recent­ly raised in a study that was pub­lished in the British med­ical jour­nal The Lancet. See more about this study. See Methods of Execution.

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