The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

Highest Court Grants Death Row Inmates One Last Appeal

Feature Story by Kamar O'Guinn - 7/21/2006

The decision is "further evidence of the Supreme Court's increasing discomfort with many aspects of the death penalty," said Steven Shapiro, the national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Hill is on death row for the 1982 killing of a Pensacola police officer. A January decision by Justice Anthony Kennedy blocked the execution of death row inmate Clarence Hill in the Florida v Hill case.

The execution was blocked just moments after Hill was strapped to a gurney with tubes inserted into his arms to inject drugs.

In Justice Kennedy's June opinion, the Court said that a death row inmate may challenge lethal injection on the grounds that the mix of drugs used causes unnecessary pain and violates the 8th Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment.

The pronouncement follows concern in the criminal justice and civil rights communities that the intravenous execution method may subject inmates to extreme pain. Many human rights advocates have long-suggested that lethal injection is in direct violation of the 8th Amendment.

Established over thirty years ago, the three-drug procedure used in lethal injections was developed without scientific or significant medical research, according to an April 2006 Human Rights Watch report. Inmates put to death are given a series of three injections: sodium thiopental, an anesthetic; pancuronium, which paralyses voluntary muscles; and potassium chloride, which causes cardiac arrest.

Human Rights Watch found no data to suggest that any of the 37 states that have adopted this method of execution have considered less painful alternatives.

"Just because a prisoner may have killed without care or conscience does not mean that the state should follow suit," said Jamie Fellner, U.S. program director at Human Rights Watch and co-author of the report. "If a state is going to execute someone, it must do its homework, consult with experts, and select a method designed to inflict the least possible pain and suffering."

While the Supreme Court's decision was embraced by many human rights advocates, death penalty supporters argue that the ruling to extend appeals compromises justice for victims and families.

Members of the Bush administration and other tough-on-crime proponents have interpreted the ruling as an unwarranted privilege granted to death row prisoners awaiting execution.

"A series of court rulings have created so many chances for appeal that whether we have the death penalty or not is almost becoming moot when people are spending all of their natural lives on death row rather than having the sentence be complete," said Florida Governor Jeb Bush. Since the ruling, executions have been halted in Florida, California, Maryland and Missouri.

Of the 3,370 death row inmates awaiting execution, more than 53 percent of them are minorities. African Americans represent roughly 13 percent of the U.S population yet according to the NAACP's Spring 2006 quarterly death row report, they represent more than 41 percent of death row prisoners and nearly 34 percent of executions since 1976.

Unequal treatment of minorities by the criminal justice system continues to be a problem. Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, suggests that the American criminal justice system could profit from a serious critique and substantial improvement.

"The death penalty has been a contested practice for many Americans for quite some time. The Supreme Court ruling serves as a step towards the eradication of not only painful lethal injection executions but also a reconsideration of how we look at the corrections system collectively," said Henderson.