US top court to examine legality of lethal injections
Thursday, September 27, 2007
IN A move which could slow the rate of US executions, the Supreme Court agreed last Tuesday to consider the constitutionality of lethal injections used in almost all the country's death penalty cases.
Amid growing controversy over exactly how lethal injections are administered, the court said it would examine the cases of two men condemned to death in the Southern state of Kentucky.
"It affects virtually everyone on death row," said Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center, who stressed, however, that the court is unlikely to end capital punishment.
"It may be all about a slowdown," he said. "For the next six months or so, we may have executions on hold."
But despite the announcement, authorities in Texas said they planned to go ahead and administer a lethal injection later Tuesday to Michael Richard, 48, sentenced to death for raping and killing a mother of seven children in 1986.
"The execution is still scheduled," Krista Moody, a spokeswoman for Texas governor Rick Perry, told AFP.
"Some countries may hesitate to execute right now, but we're not a country where departments of corrections wait unless they have to."
Rights activists argue that lethal injections are often slow and painful and contradict the constitution's ban on "cruel and unusual punishment."
So far this year, 40 of the 41 people executed in the country have been killed by lethal injection, with one choosing the electric chair. In 2006, there were 53 executions in the United States, all but one through lethal injection.AFP
Amid growing controversy over exactly how lethal injections are administered, the court said it would examine the cases of two men condemned to death in the Southern state of Kentucky.
"It affects virtually everyone on death row," said Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center, who stressed, however, that the court is unlikely to end capital punishment.
"It may be all about a slowdown," he said. "For the next six months or so, we may have executions on hold."
But despite the announcement, authorities in Texas said they planned to go ahead and administer a lethal injection later Tuesday to Michael Richard, 48, sentenced to death for raping and killing a mother of seven children in 1986.
"The execution is still scheduled," Krista Moody, a spokeswoman for Texas governor Rick Perry, told AFP.
"Some countries may hesitate to execute right now, but we're not a country where departments of corrections wait unless they have to."
Rights activists argue that lethal injections are often slow and painful and contradict the constitution's ban on "cruel and unusual punishment."
So far this year, 40 of the 41 people executed in the country have been killed by lethal injection, with one choosing the electric chair. In 2006, there were 53 executions in the United States, all but one through lethal injection.AFP
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