Supreme Court Allows Death Row Inmate Lawsuit Regarding Execution
Alabama officials sought to execute Kenneth Smith by lethal injection despite his preference for lethal gas
The Supreme Court on Monday rejected Alabama's bid to execute a death row inmate by lethal injection, leaving in place a lower court ruling that his preference for lethal gas is a viable alternative method. Kenneth Smith, sentenced to death for murdering Elizabeth Sennett in 1988, objected to being executed by lethal injection because of the pain it would cause. He alleged it would violate his right to be free of cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution and instead suggested lethal gas be used to carry out his execution.
Smith, 57, filed his suit in federal court last August, months before his botched execution. The lawsuit alleged that the state's lethal injection protocol would subject him to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the U.S. Constitution's Eighth Amendment based on problems Alabama officials encountered in putting prior condemned inmates to death, including accessing veins to insert intravenous lines.
The method in Alabama posed an "intolerable risk of torture, cruelty or substantial pain," Smith's lawsuit stated.
A judge dismissed Smith's lawsuit, but on Nov. 17, the day of his scheduled execution, the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals revived his case, letting Smith file an amended complaint. State officials that night repeatedly tried but failed to place the necessary intravenous lines or a central line in his collarbone area before calling off the execution after 11 p.m.
"Mr. Smith's worst fears began to play out much as his federal lawsuit had alleged they would," his lawyers said in court papers, adding that the experience "subjected him to hours of torture while trying to execute him and exposed him to the severe mental anguish of a mock execution."
Smith's case is not a challenge to the death penalty itself. Some liberal justices have raised questions about the death penalty in the United States but the court, with its 6-3 conservative majority, appears unlikely to reverse course on its use.
