Deborah Denno quoted in the Huffington Post 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.
Fordham Law professor and death penalty expert Deborah Denno told The Huffington Post, “I find it very hard to predict what the court’s going to do. I do think this is a court that’s going to be much more educated in pharmacology and science and medicine than it was in 2008” in the case of Baze v. Rees.
It’s “a statement in itself” that the court chose to hear the case in the first place, Denno noted.
Denno suggested that evolving public opinion about the death penalty could also be an X-factor.
“We always know the justices are looking at the surveys, the reports. They’re factors we know the court considers, but how much they weigh them is an open question,” Denno said. “The court certainly isn’t immune to what’s happening in the public sphere, and they’re not supposed to be.”
“Technically the court could make the opinion so broad that it would get rid of the death penalty,” Denno said. “The court isn’t going to do that.”
Read the entire Huffington Post article.