Mississippi Lethal-Injection Lawsuit Not Ffiled in Time

That's the title of an AP report via the Picayune Item of Mississippi.  LINK

Three Mississippi death row inmates waited too long to file a lawsuit challenging the state’s lethal-injection method, a federal appeals panel said Monday in upholding a district judge’s decision to dismiss the action.

The three judges from 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans did not address the substance of the inmates’ arguments that Mississippi’s current procedure causes unnecessary pain. The lawsuit also claimed employees administering the drugs are not properly trained.

U.S. District Judge Allen Pepper dismissed the lawsuit in July. Pepper said the inmates — Alan Dale Walker, Paul Everett Woodward and Gerald James Holland — should have filed the lawsuit years earlier.

The inmates’ attorney, Jim Craig, said he was disappointed with the ruling.

“The 5th Circuit had not previously written on this issue. We argued that there was no such statute of limitations when the harm had not yet happened ... when the harm was to happen in the future,” he said.

Craig said a decision would likely be made after Thanksgiving on whether to ask the full 5th Circuit to hear the case or file an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court.

Attorney General Jim Hood said Monday the 5th Circuit’s ruling was expected.

And:

Two other inmates initially involved in the lawsuit were executed earlier this year.