Feb. 10
MISSOURI----impending execution
Supreme Court declines to stay Missouri execution
The Supreme Court denied the stay request on Tuesday evening.
The same four justices who would have granted a stay in an Oklahoma execution
last month would have granted the stay, according to the order. While it would
take five justices to stay an execution, only four justices have to agree to
accept a case, which is why the court declined to stop that execution but
agreed not long after to consider lethal injection.
Earlier:
An inmate who is scheduled to be executed in Missouri asked the U.S. Supreme
Court on Tuesday to halt his execution, arguing that the sentence should be
delayed until after the justices hear a lethal injection case this spring.
Walter Timothy Storey, who was convicted and sentenced to death for killing his
neighbor 25 years ago, is set to be the first person executed by Missouri this
year. His execution is scheduled for after midnight Wednesday.
His stay request, filed Tuesday, points to the impact of the court’s decision
to hear a lethal injection case. Last month, the justices said they would hear
arguments over Oklahoma’s lethal injection procedures, and a short time later
they agreed to postpone three upcoming executions in that state until after
they issue a ruling in the case.
The Oklahoma case centers on the drug midazolam, which has been used in several
problematic executions in the United States. This drug is not used to carry out
executions in Missouri, though it has been given to inmates before their
executions. Instead, lethal injections in Missouri use the drug pentobarbital,
according to a protocol that was adopted in 2013 by the state’s Department of
Corrections.
Storey’s request says it does not object specifically to the use of
pentobarbital in the execution, but points to the fact that Missouri “plans to
tell him nothing about who prepared the drug, and how the drug is prepared.”
(Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster was critical of “the creeping secrecy”
involved last year, though he defended the state’s practices as legal.)
In addition, Missouri has used midazolam on inmates before they were executed,
something first reported by St. Louis Public Radio and confirmed by Koster’s
office. Storey’s request, citing these reports, says that the use of midazolam
should cause the execution to be postponed, at least until the justices have
ruled in the Oklahoma case.
In response to the request, Missouri argued that the court’s decisions to hear
the Oklahoma case and stay executions in that state are not relevant. It also
argues that the Supreme Court is not going to determine that “rapid and
painless executions of the type Missouri routinely carries out violate the ban
on cruel and unusual punishment” when it rules on the Oklahoma case.
While admitting that Missouri uses midazolam or a drug like valium as “a
pre-execution sedative,” the filing argues that midazolam is given as an option
to inmates and is not used as a lethal chemical.
The Supreme Court’s upcoming case involving lethal injections could reshape the
way executions are carried out in the United States. In taking that case, the
justices are also acknowledging that the lethal injection landscape has
dramatically changed since they last considered the issue in 2008.
States including Missouri have scrambled since then to find the drugs needed to
carry out executions, switching drugs and protocols and adopting new layers of
secrecy. Missouri, for example, planned to use propofol, an anesthetic, but
halted an execution and switched to pentobarbital after the European Union
threatened to curb exports of the drug.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a dissent that seemed to foreshadow that the
justices would hear a lethal injection case, specifically questioned “states’
increasing reliance on new and scientifically untested methods of execution.”
Last week, the Supreme Court stayed an execution in Texas, a case that does not
focus on lethal injections. Instead, that inmate’s attorneys argued that
executing him after three decades on death row would violate the constitutional
ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
(source: Washington Post)
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