No one on the Supreme Court objected publicly when the justices voted
to let Arizona proceed with the execution of Joseph Wood, who
unsuccessfully sought information about the drugs that would be used to
kill him.
Inmates in Florida and Missouri went to their deaths
by lethal injection in the preceding weeks after the high court refused
to block their executions. Again, no justice said the executions should
be stopped.
Even as the number of executions annually has
dropped by more than half over the past 15 years and the court has
barred states from killing juveniles and the mentally disabled, no
justice has emerged as a principled opponent of the death penalty.
This
court differs from some of its predecessors. Justices William Brennan
and Thurgood Marshall dissented every time their colleagues ruled
against death row inmates, and Justices Harry Blackmun and John Paul
Stevens, near the end of their long careers, came to view capital
punishment as unconstitutional.
"They're all voting to kill
them, every so often. They do it in a very workmanlike, technocratic
fashion," said Stephen Bright, a veteran death penalty lawyer in
Georgia, of the current court.
Wood's execution on July 23 was
the 26th in the United States this year and the third in which prisoners
took much longer than usual to die. Wood, convicted of killing his
estranged girlfriend and her father, was pronounced dead nearly two
hours after his execution began, and an Associated Press reporter was
among witnesses who said Wood appeared to gasp repeatedly, hundreds of
times in all, before he died.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said
she and her colleagues are aware of what happened in Arizona, though she
declined to say how the court would rule on a plea to stop the next
scheduled execution — of Michael Worthington on Wednesday in Missouri.
"Your crystal ball is as good as mine," she said last week in an interview with The Associated Press.
to let Arizona proceed with the execution of Joseph Wood, who
unsuccessfully sought information about the drugs that would be used to
kill him.
Inmates in Florida and Missouri went to their deaths
by lethal injection in the preceding weeks after the high court refused
to block their executions. Again, no justice said the executions should
be stopped.
Even as the number of executions annually has
dropped by more than half over the past 15 years and the court has
barred states from killing juveniles and the mentally disabled, no
justice has emerged as a principled opponent of the death penalty.
This
court differs from some of its predecessors. Justices William Brennan
and Thurgood Marshall dissented every time their colleagues ruled
against death row inmates, and Justices Harry Blackmun and John Paul
Stevens, near the end of their long careers, came to view capital
punishment as unconstitutional.
"They're all voting to kill
them, every so often. They do it in a very workmanlike, technocratic
fashion," said Stephen Bright, a veteran death penalty lawyer in
Georgia, of the current court.
Wood's execution on July 23 was
the 26th in the United States this year and the third in which prisoners
took much longer than usual to die. Wood, convicted of killing his
estranged girlfriend and her father, was pronounced dead nearly two
hours after his execution began, and an Associated Press reporter was
among witnesses who said Wood appeared to gasp repeatedly, hundreds of
times in all, before he died.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said
she and her colleagues are aware of what happened in Arizona, though she
declined to say how the court would rule on a plea to stop the next
scheduled execution — of Michael Worthington on Wednesday in Missouri.
"Your crystal ball is as good as mine," she said last week in an interview with The Associated Press.
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