You knew last week's good feelings about the Supreme Court were going to slip away sooner or later. Welcome to sooner. The court, by a five to four margin,
upheld the use of midazolam for lethal injection.
Oklahoma has been using midazolam as other drugs previously used for lethal injection have become difficult to obtain—drug manufacturers don't want to be the go-to source for killing people—and in April, 2014, it led to a horrifically botched execution:
Although it was for a while stated that Lockett had died of a heart attack, the autopsy said no. Cause of death was stated as lethal injection. The report also noted there had been several failed attempts inserting the IV to direct the state's poisons into Lockett's circulatory system. Several meaning 16, that being the number of puncture wounds counted. Finally, they hooked Lockett up with the IV inserted into the femoral vein of his groin. But the needle was an inch too short to do the job properly and it wound up in the femoral artery instead. Lockett spoke and tried to rise on the execution table nearly 10 minutes after he was supposed to be knocked out by the sedative and he writhed for a considerable period.
New papers filed on behalf of 21 Oklahoma death row inmates have now revealed still more details. Among them: The execution chamber was a bloody mess after Lockett was pronounced dead, the staff had been under pressure to get Lockett's execution and that of another inmate done on the same day.
That's what a majority of the Supreme Court justices said yes to. In a
dissent, Justices Breyer and Ginsburg called "for full briefing on a more basic question: whether the death penalty violates the Constitution." That briefing—let alone the right answer—will doubtless be a long time coming.