Lethal Injection Ruled Constitutional in Tennessee

“Plaintiffs were not able to carry their burdens… on any of their clams”, Bonnyman said.

She also said the plaintiffs didn’t show during a lengthy trial that there have been problems in states where the method has been used.

She said a 2008 U.S. Supreme Court case known as Baze, which upheld Kentucky’s lethal injection procedures, set the standard that an isolated mishap – including physician error – did not create an Eighth Amendment violation.

Representatives for the ACLU said in their trial briefing that this case is not meant to challenge the constitutionality of the death penalty, rather it concerns the protocol used by the executioners.

“Today the Court ruled that Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol is constitutional”.

A court ruling Wednesday could help shape the future of capital punishment in Tennessee.

Plaintiffs’ attorney Kelley Henry said they plan to appeal.

In Tennessee, the protocol calls for the use of pentobarbital mixed to order by a pharmacist, because the only commercial producer of the drug has placed restrictions on its distribution to prevent it from being used in executions.

The case has grown since 2013, with legal issues branching off into other smaller challenges along the way.

Tennessee now has 67 inmates on death row, and the last execution was in 2009. More than 30 inmates on death row filed a lawsuit saying the Tennessee Department of Correction protocol to kill inmates using lethal injection of a single drug was unconstitutional. The state said the inmates did not do so.

Judge Claudia Bonneyman of Davidson County said the 33 plaintiffs-all inmates condemned to death-and their attorneys could not prove that the one-drug method of lethal injection Tennessee uses carries a risk of cruel and unusual punishment, a civil liberty guaranteed under the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment.

“Death penalty opponents have claimed that prisoners are thus subject to feeling excruciating pain, as evidenced in some botched executions”.