Press Release: Supreme Court ruling on Lethal Injection

4.16.08 Press Release: Supreme Court ruling on Lethal Injection

IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 16, 2008
Contact: Julien Ball, Campaign to End the Death Penalty, 773-209-8476

Campaign to End the Death Penalty: Supreme Court Ruling on the Death Penalty Puts the United States on the Wrong Side of History

The ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the Kentucky lethal injection protocol, likely re-starting executions, makes the United States an international pariah, the Campaign to End the Death Penalty (CEDP) said today. “This ruling puts the United States back in dubious company. China, Vietnam, Iran and the United States carry out the vast majority of the world’s executions,” pointed out Marlene Martin, National Director of the CEDP. “If and when states re-start the execution machine, we will be going backwards as a society. The death penalty is a barbaric relic of the past, and the Supreme Court is on the wrong side of history.”

Today’s ruling in Baze v. Rees overturns the trend of the U.S. Supreme Court to limit the scope of the death penalty. In 2002, the court declared the execution of the mentally retarded unconstitutional, and in 2005, it banned the execution of juveniles, citing “evolving standards of decency.” States, too, have bolstered this trend, as New Jersey became the first state to abolish the death penalty legislatively last December. Internationally, the U.S. is the only Western industrialized country with a death penalty. The United Nations General Assembly, reflecting worldwide opinion, passed a resolution against capital punishment last year. Justice John Paul Stevens issued a SEPARATE opinion in Baze v. Rees, asserting that decisions by state legislatures, Congress and the Supreme Court itself to preserve the death penalty were not the “product of…an acceptable deliberative process that weighs the costs and risks” of the death penalty. Martin agrees. “128 men and women have walked off death row after wasting years of their lives in prison for crimes they did not commit. The ruling of the Supreme Court means that more men—most of whom are African AMERICAN all of whom are poor—will risk the executioner’s needle for crimes they did not commit.”

Sandra Reed, a Board member of the CEDP, says her son Rodney is on death row for a crime he did not commit. She maintains that her son’s case is an example of why the justice system is unfit to re-start executions. “I am from that sour belly of the beast in Texas. In 1998, my son was tried by an all-white jury and wrongfully convicted for a crime he did not commit. Rodney’s lawyers did nothing for him. The Supreme Court is supposed to be on the side of justice. Instead, they want to stand by while the State of Texas kills Rodney.” Baze v. Rees centered on a constitutional challenge to the three-drug protocol used in most states to carry out lethal injections. Attorneys for death row inmates argued that the procedure violates the eighth amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment, as the first drug administered often fails to sedate death row prisoners, ensuring that they suffer excruciating pain as the second and third drugs paralyze them, then stop their heart. In April 2005, the British medical journal The Lancet published a report, finding “that in 43 of the 49 executed prisoners studied the anesthetic administered during lethal injection was lower than required for surgery. In 43 percent of cases, drug levels were consistent with awareness.”

“The Supreme Court today has declared today that torturing someone to death is not cruel and unusual punishment. But no matter how you mix the chemicals, the death penalty is still cruel. It’s cruel that it punishes the poor; it’s cruel that it targets African-Americans and Latinos; and it’s cruel that it condemns the innocent to die,” said Martin. “The death penalty is wrong, and there’s just no right way to do the wrong thing.”