The Supreme Court on Wednesday seemed reluctant to place too many procedural barriers in the path of death row inmates who want to make last-minute challenges to a state's method of execution.
Exploring for the first time the humaneness of lethal injections -- the method of choice for almost all states that use the death penalty -- the justices appeared reluctant to give states carte blanche to use any combination of death-dealing chemicals they choose.
At one point in oral arguments in Hill v. McDonough, Justice Anthony Kennedy suggested that states have "some minimal obligation" to ensure that the chemicals used in legal executions employ the "most humane method" available.
Justice John Paul Stevens, citing a brief filed in the case by three veterinarians, noted that the combination of drugs used by Florida would be prohibited for use in euthanizing dogs and cats.
The case before the Court was brought by Clarence Hill, who was convicted in the 1982 murder of a Pensacola, Fla., police officer during a bank robbery. Decades of appeals were intermittently successful in reversing the sentence, but each time the sentence was restored.
In 2000, Florida changed its method of execution from the electric chair to lethal injection. But Hill did not challenge the procedure until weeks before his scheduled execution date of Jan. 24, 2006. Florida courts denied the challenge, and four days before the execution date, Hill's lawyers went to federal court, invoking 42 U.S.C. §1983 and claiming that lethal injection would violate their client's civil rights.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals treated his 1983 claim as the equivalent of a habeas corpus petition and denied it as an improper second or successive petition under the 1996 law that Congress passed limiting habeas. Hours before the scheduled execution, Justice Kennedy granted a stay to allow the appeal over whether and how Hill could challenge the method of execution.
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