Last Wednesday, the U. S. Supreme Court heard the so-called “Death Penalty Case,” wherein prisoners on death row were claiming that the manner of death administered (in those jurisdictions which still had the death penalty) constitutes prohibited cruel and unusual punishment under the 8th Amendment to the Constitution.
The case is curious, according to Steve Shapiro, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, in remarks delivered May 4th here in Boston. Generally (this paragraph is not for the weak of stomach), execution by drugs is effected through a three drug cocktail and the first drug is an anesthetic which is designed to prevent the last step from being incredibly painful. Fearing consumer back-lash, the company that has provided the anesthetic has now refused to produce it for lethal injection purposes. The now-proposed substitute is a barbiturate not prescribed for elimination of intense pain.
From the conservative side of the aisle, Justice Alito noted that our society simply must have the technology to kill people painlessly, citing assisted suicides. Justice Scalia blamed the unavailability of the drug on an “abolitionist movement” of anti-death-penalty activists that has kept it off the market; he apparently was disturbed that people on death row should seek to bar a particular method of execution because certain other people’s actions have made that drug unavailable.