Post-Baze lethal injection litigation
The SCOTUSBlog notes that the latest round of lethal injection litigation has begun. The State of Florida has filed a symbolic motion to lift the stay of Mark Schwab’s execution date. Most, if not all, of the Baze related stays and cert petitions will likely be “disposed of” in the coming days, and no later than the coming weeks with at least some appear to be listed for Conferenced by the Justices for this Friday.
What is curious, however, is the glimpse of what will be the likely face of the new rounds of “li” litigation, Berry v. Epps, 07-7348.
In the new Mississippi filing, a supplemental brief, lawyers for death-row inmate Earl Wesley Berry contended that the lethal injection procedures used in that state provides fewer safeguards than under Kentucky’s procedures for avoiding ”serious harm” to the inmate during the execution process. The case is Berry v. Epps, 07-7348. The Court stayed his execution on Oct. 30.
The brief argued that “the Mississippi procedure…deviates in several important ways, not just from Kentucky’s practice, but from the practice used in other states.”
It gave these examples: Mississippi uses a 2-gram dose of the first drug (sodium thiopental, “one gram lower than all but three other states”; Mississippi requires a “maximal concentraion” in mixing thiopental with IV fluid; it does not have “minimum qualifications for the IV execution team”; it does not provide “the training and practice sessions required in other states”, and, it has “no ‘back-up plan’ in the even of failed IV insertion or other errors in administrration of the chemicals.”
Berry is scheduled to be conferenced Friday.
