NBC News – Oklahoma and other states can continue to carry out capital punishment by lethal injection, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 Monday even though the combination of drugs they use differs from one approved by the court seven years ago.
Lawyers for death row inmates in Oklahoma had argued that the state's current combination of three chemicals for lethal injections amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. The first chemical, they said, does not reliably induce a deep unconsciousness, leaving a prisoner susceptible to searing pain caused by the two follow-on injections.
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Oklahoma used the drug combination a year ago to execute Clayton Lockett, who regained consciousness and moaned. The state concluded that the intravenous tube carrying the drugs was inserted in his leg improperly.
Six months ago the state used the same combination on another condemned man, Charles Warner, whose last words were recalled by witnesses as "my body is on fire."
Like other death penalty states, Oklahoma formerly used a three-chemical protocol that withstood a US Supreme Court challenge in 2008. But, since then, supplies of the first drug, the barbiturate sodium thiopental, have dried up as manufacturers refused to make it available for capital punishment.
Defense lawyers cited studies showing that while the drug chosen by Oklahoma as a substitute, midazolam, can cause unconsciousness, it does not produce a sufficiently deep coma-like state. Pain caused by the second drug, which is intended to immobilize, can force the prisoner to be "jolted into consciousness."
Oklahoma cites its own scientific studies to argue that a sufficient doze of midazolam produces a deep enough unconsciousness to render a person unable to feel "even extremely painful stimuli." And the state said defense lawyers failed to offer an alternative method of execution would substantially reduce any risk of severe pain.
How does this apply for the State of Virginia?Â
- According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Virginia is one of two states that proposed using midazolam as part of a three drug lethal injection protocol (the other being Alabama).
- Virginia has not executed anyone using the drug, but the proposal's in place.
- Only six people have been sentenced to death in Virginia since 2006.
- The last Virginia execution was on January 16, 2013