Tennessee may be about to carry out another execution—the first since federal Judge Aleta Trauger ruled 16 months ago that the slipshod way we perform lethal injections violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. The U.S. Supreme Court may have rendered her decision essentially moot, as the lawyers say, with a ruling in a Kentucky case that seemed to give the green light again to lethal injections around the country.
Lawyers for condemned prisoners say the Kentucky case wasn't a good test. They say there's more convincing evidence that Tennessee's lethal injection procedures are screwed up, and they're fighting to stop this week's execution until higher authorities hear their arguments. But they're not likely to find a receptive audience at the Supreme Court.
The court's definition of cruel and unusual punishment is a little loose. A near-majority ascribes to the "originalist" school of jurisprudence under which floggings in the public square are probably OK. Maybe we should set higher standards. The fact remains that nothing has been done to correct any of the serious issues that troubled Trauger about what we do here. Mainly, she worried inmates are too likely to suffer what was variously described in court testimony as "excruciating," "terrifying," "horrific," "violent" and "grotesque" pain at the state's hands.
