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| Supreme Court takes up Ala. lethal injection case |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 03/30/2004 |
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The Supreme Court took a stark look yesterday at how convicted killers are put to death, hearing an appeal from a man who contends that his damaged veins make it likely that his lethal injection could be botched. Injection is available to inmates in 37 states and is generally considered more humane than hanging, electrocution, and the gas chamber. But it is not without problems, justices were told by the lawyer for Alabama death row inmate David Larry Nelson. Last fall, Nelson was less than three hours from execution when the Supreme Court gave him a temporary reprieve. Because of the condition of his veins -- damaged by drug use -- he was told it may be impossible to insert an intravenous line without cutting deep into flesh and muscle. His lawyer, Bryan Stevenson of Montgomery, told justices that Alabama had never had such a situation before. A group of doctors had said in court papers that if done improperly, the procedure could cause Nelson to hemorrhage and suffer heart problems before the drugs kill him. Justices peppered Stevenson and Alabama's lawyer with questions about how his death sentence would be carried out, with the possibility of prison staff finding a viable vein in his neck or thigh. The court is deciding a technical question of whether last-minute appeals from death row inmates should be allowed in federal courts, but the subject returned repeatedly to lethal injection and Nelson's contention that his punishment would be unconstitutionally cruel unless special precautions were taken. Justice John Paul Stevens said that if Alabama wins, an inmate would have a limited right to appeal if he were told shortly before his execution that "they're going to hang him up by his thumbs and beat him with whips until he dies." Nelson's case prompted legal challenges to the types of drug cocktails used in lethal injections in other states, and justices have clashed 5-4 in a string of emergency appeals from inmates seeking temporary reprieves, on the grounds that their own lethal injections would be unconstitutional. |
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