Method upheld — 04/18/08

Sat, May 17 2008

— The importance of Wednesday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding Kentucky’s use of lethal injection executions extends far beyond the borders of Kentucky and involves more than just the method of execution. In essence, it was the latest upholding of the death penalty by the highest court in the land.
The 7-2 ruling ends an 8-month moratorium on executions throughout the nation and allows Kentucky to schedule the executions of convicted murderers Ralph Baze and Thomas Clyde Bowling Jr. — again. The executions of Baze, who killed the Powell County sheriff and his deputy, and Bowling, who shot a couple to death and wounded their 2-year-old son outside a dry-cleaning business in Lexington, had been put on hold until the Supreme Court ruled on Kentucky’s method of lethal injection.
However, Baze has another appeal making its way through the courts, and there could be more delays in Bowling’s case. In fact, two other Kentucky inmates on death row could be put to death before either Baze or Bowling. That’s neither one is appealing their death sentences.
The executions of dozens of other death row inmates in other states also were delayed until the high court ruled in the Kentucky case that was widely viewed as a test of the death penalty and not just Kentucky’s three-drug methods of lethal injection. Indeed, if the court had banned lethal injections, it would have had the effect of banning all types of executions.
After all, Kentucky and other states replaced the electric chair with lethal injections because the injections were deemed the most humane way of putting someone to death. If the court determined that the state could not put someone to death by giving them a shot, then surely the state could not kill by electrocution, the gas chamber, firing squad, hanging or other methods of execution once employed in this country.
However, while the vote by the Supreme Court was rather one sided, the justices were far from unanimous in their reasons for their votes. Indeed, Justice John Paul Stevens voted with the majority on the question of lethal injections but said for the first time that he now believes the death penalty is unconstitutional. Such comments only assure the legal arguments over the death penalty will continue.
Chief Justice John Roberts rebuffed the latest assault on capital punishment, this time by foes focusing on methods rather than on the legality of the death penalty itself. Indeed, the Kentucky case was not about the constitutionality of the death penalty generally or even lethal injection. Instead, Baze and Bowling contended that their executions could be carried out more humanely, with less risk of pain.
The inmates “have not carried their burden of showing that the risk of pain from maladministration of a concededly humane lethal injection protocol, and the failure to adopt untried and untested alternatives, constitute cruel and unusual punishment,” Roberts said in an opinion that garnered only three votes. Four other justices, however, agreed with the outcome.
Roberts also suggested the court will not halt scheduled executions in the future unless “the condemned prisoner establishes that the state’s lethal injection protocol creates a demonstrated risk of severe pain.”
While there are many in this state who disagree with the death penalty, it clearly has the support of a majority of the people. Efforts to abolish the death penalty have gotten nowhere during recent sessions of the Kentucky General Assembly.
While some states — Florida and Texas, come to immediate mind — have executed dozens of inmates since a 1982 Supreme Court ruling allowed executions to resume, Kentucky has imposed the ultimate punishment just the way it should be: Rarely. Only two inmates have been executed in Kentucky since the death penalty was reimposed, and only one of them was by lethal injection. In both cases, the inmates were clearly guilty of the crimes for which they were put to death, as are both Bowling and Baze.
No doubt the debate of the death penalty will continue to rage both in Kentucky and the nation as a whole. Justice Stevens even said Wednesday’s ruling does not end the debate on lethal injection.
We confess to having mixed emotions about the death penalty, but as long as the law gives judges and juries the option of imposing it, that law should be enforced. We only hope that Kentucky continues to do so only rarely and with the certainty that those being p[ut to death are guilty as charged.