Challenging Lethal Injection

A unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruled on June 12 that death row inmates who have exhausted their criminal appeals may challenge the constitutionality of the lethal injection method of execution under federal civil rights statutes. The ruling (in a Florida case, Hill v. McDonough) does not address the constitutionality of lethal injection itself – nor did the appeal filed on behalf of Florida inmate Clarence Hill. Hill challenged the execution method as a banned form of cruel and unusual punishment, but did not contest his 1983 conviction for the murder of a Florida police officer because he had exhausted that avenue before filing his civil rights challenge to the manner of execution.

The Supremes' ruling in the case opines that inmates may raise an Eighth Amendment challenge under a provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1871, to argue that the three-drug death cocktail used in executions constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. "Hill's [appeal] if successful would not necessarily prevent the State from executing him by lethal injection," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court. Hill "does not challenge the lethal injection sentence as a general matter but seeks instead only to enjoin" the state of Florida from using lethal injection to kill him, a method that Hill alleges "causes 'a foreseeable risk of … gratuitous and unnecessary' pain," Kennedy wrote. Hill concedes that other methods of execution are available and would be constitutional, Kennedy notes, and "at least to this point in the litigation," the state of Florida has not argued that Hill's challenge would leave the state without a way to carry out the sentence. "Under these circumstances a grant of injunctive relief could not be seen as barring the execution of Hill's sentence," Kennedy wrote.

Although a number of states filed briefs with the high court to argue that ruling in favor of Hill would open the doors to other inmates filing last-minute civil rights objections to lethal injection, the decision does not bar the states from using an alternate method of execution.