On The Front Lines
The Rutherford Institute Joins with ACLU to Ask U.S. Supreme Court to Declare Lethal Injections Unconstitutional in Baze v. Rees
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Attorneys for The Rutherford Institute have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to declare that Kentucky's lethal injection protocol, which has been shown to carry an unnecessary risk of inflicting pain on the condemned, constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Thirty-seven of the 38 states that have the death penalty use lethal injection and have protocols similar to Kentucky's. Many states have placed a moratorium on executions until Baze v. Rees, which is virtually identical to challenges being mounted by death row inmates across the country, is resolved.
In filing a joint amicus brief with the ACLU in Baze v. Rees, Institute attorneys focused their arguments on the fact that lethal injection procedures and executions have been and continue to be shrouded in secrecy, which has led to a method of execution that poses an unnecessary risk of excruciating pain. A copy of the brief is available here.
"Transparency in government is a critical aspect of our democracy, and it helps to ensure that public policy accords with contemporary values and civilized standards of decency," said John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute. "Among the purposes of The Rutherford Institute is to stridently defend notions of fairness and equality under the law. This case clearly concerns fairness and equality in the application of the death penalty, and is vitally important to constitutional jurisprudence and the rule of law."
Ralph Baze and Thomas Clyde Bowling are inmates on Kentucky's death row who are challenging the chemicals and procedures Kentucky uses in its lethal injection executions. Kentucky, like every state that performs lethal injections, uses a three-drug injection sequence to execute condemned men and women. According to the brief, this method of execution was first created in Oklahoma and was then adopted by the other states without reflection or study, largely enabled by the shroud of secrecy surrounding lethal injections. The brief takes specific issue with the lack of transparency surrounding lethal injection protocols across the country, raising serious questions about the secrecy surrounding execution protocols and executions, the lack of accountability of departments of corrections and the dearth of post-execution information released. Institute attorneys argue that because of this secrecy and insulation from meaningful public review and criticism, these protocols are likely to have departed from the Supreme Court's prevailing standard of preventing "the purposeless and needless imposition of pain and suffering." In asking the Court to hold that the protocols violate the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, Institute attorneys stated that the protocols, "[c]loaked as they have been in secrecy and posing as they do an unnecessary risk that the government will inflict excruciating pain on those who are legally required to endure the execution process," are the epitome of "ill-considered, ill-balanced misgovernment completely at odds with civilized standards of decency and contemporary values."
