WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court returned to work Monday to hear pleas from death-row inmates to force states to use different drugs or tighten their procedures to reduce the risk that prisoners will suffer excruciating pain during their executions. In their first day on the bench after a holiday break, the justices are hearing arguments in a case that challenges Kentucky's method of executing prisoners using a three-drug cocktail. Three dozen states use similar procedures. The court's decision to step into the case has brought about a halt in executions that is likely to last at least until the summer. Lined up in front of the court waiting to attend the arguments, college students Jeremy Sperling and Gira Joshi said they oppose the death penalty, but regard making executions less painful and more humane as a worthy goal. "You have the right to die with dignity," said Joshi, a political science and religion major at New Jersey's Rutgers University. Sperling, a psychology and religion major at New York University, said serving a life prison term is the appropriate alternative to the death penalty. Kentucky, backed by the Bush administration, says it works hard to execute inmates humanely, countering claims that its procedure violates the 8th Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Recent executions in Florida and Ohio, however, took much longer than usual, with strong indications that the prisoners suffered severe pain in the process. Workers had trouble inserting the IV lines that are used to deliver the drugs. The Kentucky inmates say there are problems with the three drugs that are administered in succession to knock out, paralyze and kill prisoners. The argument against the three-drug protocol is that if the initial anesthetic does not take hold, a third drug that stops the heart can cause excruciating pain. But that pain would be masked by the second drug that paralyzes the prisoner and renders him unable to express his discomfort. The inmates say that prison workers need better training and prisoners need to be more closely monitored for pain, or states should switch to a single drug, a barbiturate that causes minimal pain.
I say an eye for an eye. If you beat someone to death with a pipe wrench we get to beat you to death with a pipe wrench. let the punishment match the crime.
oh, and the line "You have the right to die with dignity," right...what a bunch of bs
Posted by: alphadog1
Kentucky attorney David Barron always has death on his mind.
Barron, a 29-year-old Billerica native, has spent years fighting for the rights of Kentucky's 38 death-row inmates through the public defender's capital post-conviction unit, a group of 10 attorneys who handle appeals for those on the state's death row.
The work often has the same end -- death.
Barron was set to appear today before the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., in one of the largest capital-punishment cases to go before the country's highest court in decades.
The Billerica Memorial High School graduate (Class of 1996) filed an appeal in 2004 on behalf of two Kentucky death-row inmates -- Ralph Baze and Thomas Clyde Bowling -- arguing that the three-drug cocktail used in lethal injections across the country can cause excruciating pain. The question is whether inmates suffer extreme pain while immobilized and unable to cry out. This amounts to cruel and unusual punishment, Barron argues, a violation of the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The opposition will argue that inmates are unconscious and unaware of the other chemicals being injected, so they are given a painless and humane death.
Each side gets 30 minutes to present its argument to the court. Although Barron is admitted to argue before the Supreme Court, he won't argue this case. He'll be in court, however, assisting fellow public defender John Palombi, who has a decade of experience in such cases.
A ruling should be issued by or before the end of June.
Baze's scheduled execution date of Sept. 25, 2007, was stayed pending a Supreme Court ruling. Bowling's execution, which was scheduled for Nov. 30, 2004, has also been stayed. The last execution in Kentucky was that of Edward L. Harper in 1999.
The case arises out of two sets of grisly murders. On Jan. 30. 1992, Baze ambushed and murdered Sheriff Steve Bennett and Deputy Sheriff Arthur Briscoe of Powell County when the officers tried to serve several Ohio warrants on Baze.
Baze shot Bennett and Briscoe each three times in the back. On April 9, 1990, Bowling shot and killed Eddie and Tina Earley and wounded the couple's 2-year-old son as the victims sat in their car in the parking lot of a dry-cleaning business in Lexington.
Bowling's car crashed into the driver's side of the Earley's car. After the impact, Bowling got out of his car, shot the victims and then returned to his car and fled the scene.
The U.S. Supreme Court accepts fewer than 1 percent of the 8,500 cases submitted each year, Barron said.
"I'm pleased at the fact that the Supreme Court will consider this important and significant issue," Barron said in a telephone interview from Washington, D.C., this week. "But I'm tired."
It has been a grueling process to get to the highest court in the land. Barron filed the appeal in 2004, soon after arriving in Kentucky after a stint in South Carolina, also working on death-penalty cases.
Thirty-six states use lethal injection.
If the Supreme Court rules in Barron's favor, it won't end lethal injections, Barron said, but "states will have to change the way they carry out lethal injections."
Death-penalty work in Kentucky is a long way from Massachusetts, which doesn't allow the death penalty. But from an early age, Barron knew he wanted to be a lawyer who did this type of work.
"I can't give a specific answer why I only do death-penalty cases," he said. "I guess it's just that I gravitate toward the indigent."
Another lure is that by the time Barron gets the case, he and his colleagues are the inmate's last chance. All other appeals have been exhausted. Barron opposes the death penalty and has a fundamental belief that no one has the right to take someone else's life.
He said he has had clients who have been executed. "It's always disturbing, but I believe in what I'm doing and that each person deserves quality representation" whether or not they can afford it, he said.
Growing up in Billerica, his parents, Mark and Rachel Barron, didn't have a lot of money, he said.
A good student at Billerica High, Barron was always working after school to earn money for college. He graduated from Boston College in 2000 and went to Brooklyn School of Law, arriving in New York with no money and no place to live. He graduated from law school in 2003 with the specific intent to work on death-penalty cases.
"If there was no death penalty, I wouldn't practice law," he admitted. "I'd choose a different profession." Although Barron prides himself on working long hours and never taking a sick day, after the Supreme Court hears arguments today, he said he may take a few days off.
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