Clarence Hill lay on a gurney with IV lines sewed into his veins. Sentenced to death for the murder of a Florida police officer more than 24 years ago, Hill was prepared to receive his final punishment by lethal injection. He was not, however, willing to suffer the pain the chemicals would cause as they coursed through his body to kill him.

The Supreme Court believed he shouldn't bear that pain either as it blocked Hill's execution mere minutes before the toxic cocktail was injected into his arms. Hill's defense attorneys had filed a brief questioning whether or not lethal injection was cruel and unusual punishment.

Currently used in 37 of the 38 states utilizing capital punishment, lethal injection has been, until recently, considered the most humane way to execute an inmate. Recent media attention on difficult executions have made death row inmates, doctors and Supreme Court Justices question the process altogether.

“[This] procedure would be prohibited if it applied to dogs and cats,” said Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens while debating the Hill case.

In June, the Supreme Court will first rule on the legal route a death row inmates must follow to file a lawsuit that claims lethal injection is cruel and unusual.

However, the future of lethal injection might fall on the shoulders of the medical community.

“There are likely to be major changes in the execution process,” says Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. “The doctor problem is the biggest part of this issue. Lethal injection is a medical procedure, but there are ethical guidelines that say doctors cannot participate in executions.”

One doctor does, in fact, have a history of involvement with the death penalty. In 1977, Dr. Stanley Deutsch created the lethal injection method. By Deutsch's method, inmates are hooked to an IV to receive sodium thiopental, a barbiturate that induces unconsciousness. A second drug, the muscle relaxant pancuronium bromide, is administered next to paralyze the entire body. Finally, potassium chloride is injected to induce cardiac arrest.

“The big mystery is how much pain these inmates feel,” says Dr. Jonathan Groner, associate professor of surgery at Ohio State University and the director of Trauma Programs at Ohio's Children's Hospital. “In a hospital setting, you would be assessed after you were given the first drug to ensure you were unconscious. That doesn't always happen in an execution room.”

This is why inmate defense attorneys are now questioning this procedure. They say it cannot be proven that inmates are fully unconscious before the last two drugs take affect. Typically, doctors use machines and small tests to decipher a patient's unconscious state. These tests, however, are not performed by corrections officials.

Lethal injection has become a contested issue in the medical community as well. Many medical experts claim the procedure requires medical oversight for it to be correctly administered.

 “Issues like finding veins and dosage control will always be a problem during executions – but that means you have to involve a doctor in the execution,” says Groner.

Finding a vein is sometimes the biggest issue for officials during an execution. In two recent cases, officials struggled to find veins of inmates who previously abused intravenous drugs. Some doctors believe they should be present at times like this to ensure that the execution is as painless as possible. According to Groner, this concerns medical profession so much, that some allegedly aid executions anonymously in states like Missouri.

“This is a medical procedure, certainly,” says Groner. “But it is against American Medical Association guidelines for doctors to participate in executions. Moreover, if I participated in an execution as a doctor, would you want me to treat your child? I believe the answer would be ‘no'. It's degrading to the profession of medicine if even one doctor participates in executions.”

Even though doctors can correctly administer lethal injection, many believe that their profession's ethics limits what they can do.

If the Supreme Court decides that lethal injection is cruel and unusual, corrections officials might be forced to find another method to carry out capital punishment.

“On one hand, it seems like a fixable problem: We just come up with a new mix of chemicals, says Dieter.

This still doesn't change the AMA's code of ethics prohibiting physicians from participating.

“On the other hand, if all doctors refuse to participate, it might cause a large crisis for the death penalty issue because there is no other method used. I don't think we're going back to the electric chair,” says Dieter.

Groner sees a similar future.

“If all the doctors and nurses stepped up and said “Hey, this is ethically wrong and we won't do it”, we would have to think about another way to execute people,” Groner predicts. “That's what is going to come of this: a new way, an old way, or no way to conduct executions.”

As the Supreme Court prepares to release a ruling on the legal road inmates should take to file suit against the practice of lethal injection, corrections officials and doctors across the country prepare to re-examine execution themselves and possibly discover a new way to administer capital punishment.