The U.S. Supreme Court unan­i­mous­ly ruled that an Alabama death row inmate could pur­sue his claim that the lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures in his case con­sti­tute cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment. David Nelson, who was less than three hours away from his sched­uled exe­cu­tion last fall when the Supreme Court gave him a tem­po­rary reprieve, had filed a claim under sec­tion 1983 of the Civil Rights Law stat­ing that his dam­aged veins would make it impos­si­ble to insert an intra­venous line with­out cut­ting deep into flesh and mus­cle. Nelson said that such a pro­ce­dure was a vio­la­tion of his rights under the Eighth Amendment. Alabama main­tained that this claim was sim­ply part of Nelson’s death penal­ty appeal and should be dis­missed because it was filed too late. The Justices ruled that low­er courts were wrong to block appeals by Nelson, and, in the opin­ion writ­ten by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the Justices agreed that Nelson’s claim was sep­a­rate from any chal­lenge to his sen­tence or con­vic­tion. Physicians have stat­ed that the cut-down pro­ce­dure the state would use to find a vein for lethal injec­tion could cause Nelson to bad­ly hem­or­rhage and suf­fer heart prob­lems pri­or to his death caused by the lethal injec­tion drugs. (See Associated Press, May 24, 2004) See Execution Methods. See also, Supreme Court.
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