The death-penalty landscape in the United States is in such flux that lethal-injection protocols differ not only from state to state, but even from one execution to another in the same state, said Deborah Denno, in the National Catholic Register.
“The states have been changing execution methods continuously,” Denno said. “What we saw in Virginia is regrettable, that this continues to happen, but in some ways, it doesn’t surprise me. The protocols, the kind of drugs they are using, are so problematic that they wouldn’t be able to use them unless they were hidden in secrecy.”
Next month, the U.S. Supreme Court will review lethal injections in Oklahoma to determine if they violate the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. The case — Glossip v. Gross — will be the high court’s first examination of lethal injection since it upheld Kentucky’s protocols in 2008.
“It will be interesting to see what the court is going to do,” Denno said. “The court could make it a very narrow decision or they could make it broader. We’ll have to see how this plays out.”
Read the entire National Catholic Register article here.
