On April 29, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argu­ment in Glossip v. Gross, a case chal­leng­ing the use of mida­zo­lam in lethal injec­tions. Midazolam was used as the first drug in three botched exe­cu­tions in 2014, includ­ing the exe­cu­tion of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma exact­ly one year ago. Prisoners on Oklahoma’s death row argued that mida­zo­lam should not be used in exe­cu­tions because it could not reli­ably anes­the­size the pris­on­er to pre­vent him or her from expe­ri­enc­ing extreme pain when the sec­ond and third drugs in Oklahoma’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col were inject­ed. The Justices ques­tioned both sides intense­ly, with the more con­ser­v­a­tive jus­tices gen­er­al­ly favor­ing the state’s argu­ments and the more lib­er­al jus­tices favor­ing the pris­on­ers’ argu­ments. Justice Elena Kagan com­pared the effects of potas­si­um chlo­ride, the third exe­cu­tion drug, to being burned alive, say­ing, ​“Suppose that we said we’re going to burn you at the stake, but before we do, we’re going to use an anes­thet­ic of com­plete­ly unknown prop­er­ties and unknown effects.” Conservatives on the Court crit­i­cized the case as a veiled attacked on the death penal­ty itself. The Court is expect­ed to decide the case before the cur­rent term ends in June. 

(E. Eckholm, ​“Supreme Court Hears Oklahoma Inmates’ Lethal Injection Case,” New York Times, April 29, 2015; R. Wolf, ​“Supreme Court’s con­ser­v­a­tive jus­tices defend lethal injec­tions,” USA Today, April 29, 2015.) Read the tran­script of oral argu­ment in Glossip v. Gross. See Lethal Injection and U.S. Supreme Court.

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