WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to decide a case on the constitutionality of the new combinations of drugs that some states are using to execute prisoners and that critics say cause intense suffering.
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In April, Oklahoma botched the execution of Clayton D. Lockett, who appeared to moan and struggle after the drugs were administered, then died in the execution chamber 43 minutes after the injections had begun.
That led the state to suspend lethal injections and try to improve its procedures. Oklahoma decided to continue using the sedative now under legal challenge, but at a higher dosage.
The case will provide the Supreme Court’s first evaluation of lethal injections during a time when the customary drugs have become scarce and states have tried new combinations and refused to identify the sources of the lethal chemicals.
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The case the court agreed on Friday to hear, Glossip v. Gross, No. 14-7955, involves three inmates who said Oklahoma’s three-chemical procedure violated the Eighth Amendment because it posed a significant risk of terrible suffering.
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Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented from the denial of a stay for Mr. Warner, saying the case presented two questions worthy of the court’s consideration.
The first, she said, was whether the inmates should be required to specify an alternative method of execution, as courts have demanded in Oklahoma and elsewhere, before challenging the method to be used by the state.
“It would be odd if the constitutionality of being burned alive, for example, turned on a challenger’s ability to point to an available guillotine,” Justice Sotomayor wrote.
The second issue, she wrote, was whether the state should be using midazolam, a sedative, as its first chemical. Medical experts testifying on behalf of the inmates at an evidentiary hearing said the effects of high doses of midazolam, which Oklahoma adopted, were too unpredictable to justify its use.
Midazolam was also involved in prolonged, possibly painful executions last year in Ohio and Arizona. The drug has also been used by Florida in a dozen executions at the start of a three-drug combination, similar to that used in Oklahoma. The sedative is intended to render the prisoner unconscious before injection of a paralytic and then a caustic heart-stopping agent. If it does not do so, medical experts say, the inmate will suffer excruciating pain, which could go undetected because the prisoner would be paralyzed and unable to communicate.
Those states have switched to midazolam because companies making the traditional barbiturates, which have a longer track record and deeper anesthetic properties, have refused to provide them for executions.
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An expert witness for the state had defended the chemical, but Justice Sotomayor wrote that his testimony was open to question. He “cited no studies,” Justice Sotomayor wrote, “but instead appeared to rely primarily on the web site www.drugs.com.”
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