Deborah Denno quoted in CBS News about the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to take up Glossip v. Gross which centers on the constitutionality of using the drug midazolam in lethal-injection executions.
“The drug protocol the court validated in 2008 was no longer available,” explained Deborah Denno, a law professor at Fordham University who specializes in capital punishment. As a result, “there’s been an explosion of different kinds of protocols that aren’t similar to what the court upheld in 2008.”
The Glossip case is so pressing, Denno argued, because the court’s decision inBaze v. Rees was “ineffective” and states are now “experimenting” with capital punishment. “I don’t see how you can characterize it any other way. They’re using so many drugs in the execution process that have never been used on a human being before to kill somebody,” she explained. “Oklahoma was desperate to find a drug that they could use, and they took one that was not high up on the food chain of choices here.”
“I think that would be surprising, that the court would sweep wider than it has to. That doesn’t mean it won’t happen,” said Denno. “Irrespective of what happens tomorrow, as a factual issue, the poll numbers are dropping…an increasing number of states have found the death penalty unconstitutional. These are just facts…Since 1999 we’ve seen a precipitous decline in the number of people we’ve been executing, and the public is so much more aware of these issues.”
Read the entire CBS News article.