WASHINGTON, Sept. 25 — The Supreme Court on Tuesday stepped into the debate over whether the most commonly used drug "cocktail" used to execute prisoners on death row is so likely to produce needless pain and suffering as to be unconstitutional.
It was the fifth time in two months that the court has issued or upheld a stay of execution, strongly signaling once again that it intends to block all executions by lethal injection until it rules on the central issue in a case from Kentucky: whether the three-drug "cocktail" commonly used to execute prisoners is so likely to produce needless pain and suffering as to be unconstitutional.
Quoting previous opinions from the US supreme court, they found that the prisoner was at "objectively intolerable risk of harm" in that Missouri's planned method of killing him was "sure or very likely to cause... needless suffering".
They said that Glossip's lawyers had not shown that the state had a better option than midazolam or that the use of midazolam with the other drugs was "sure or very likely to result in needless suffering".
They said that Glossip's lawyers had not shown that the state had had a better option, or that the use of midazolam was "sure or very likely to result in needless suffering".
First, why would anyone, as Zimmerman did, forge such an urgent sense of identity from his role as an armed, make-believe policeman or neighborhood vigilante — an identity that led him, at a minimum, to walk around with a concealed handgun and take needless risks likely to end in tragedy?
"When the wrong people have access to guns," he said in June, "needless violence is likely to happen".
Liberal policy experts see the restrictions as a punitive policy that is likely to cause vulnerable people needless suffering by depriving them of essential health care.
A de facto peacenik who was horrified by the prospect of needless war, Reagan likely would have been appalled by the aggressive posturing of most of the Republicans currently seeking the White House.
The court stated that "speculation cannot substitute for evidence that the use of the drug is 'sure or very likely to cause serious illness and needless suffering,'" citing the decision in Baze v. Rees.
But the drug is untested for use in executions, and medical experts have warned it could lead to "substantial risk of serious harm such that condemned inmates are significantly likely to face extreme, torturous and needless pain and suffering".
