United States Supreme Court Rejects Another Challenge to Another Method of Lethal Injection But Leaves the Door Open to Future Litigation

The Supreme Court decided Bucklew v. Precythe today, rejecting a death row inmate’s challenge to Missouri’s single-drug execution protocol. Challenges to lethal injection are now 0-for-3 in the Supreme Court, but the Court did not foreclose future litigation. To the contrary, it left the door open to further challenges, and so did nothing to break up the litigation logjam that has resulted in a de facto moratorium on executions in North Carolina. Facts. Russell Bucklew’s girlfriend left him and sought refuge at a neighbor’s home. Bucklew forced his way into the home; shot and killed the neighbor; and pistol-whipped, kidnapped, and raped Bucklew’s girlfriend. Procedural history. Bucklew was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. His appeals and collateral attacks on his conviction were not successful. Bucklew then sought to challenge Missouri’s lethal injection protocol. During Bucklew’s time on death row, Missouri modified its protocol several times, moving from a three-drug “cocktail” to the use of a single sedative, propofol, to the use of a different single sedative, pentobarbital. Other states have likewise adjusted their protocols, sometimes in response to an inability to procure drugs for use in lethal injections. As these changes were taking place, the constitutionality of lethal injection was being litigated across the country, resulting in two decisions by the Supreme Court. In Baze v. Rees, 553 U.S. 35 (2008), the Court upheld Kentucky’s three-drug lethal injection protocol because the inmate challenging it did not identify an alternative method of execution that was “feasible, readily implemented, and [would] [...]