There is news to report from Kentucky and Ohio.
The AP reports, "Inmates challenge new execution method in Kentucky," via the Lexington Herald-Leader. It's written by Brett Barrouquere.
Kentucky's lethal injection protocol was set to take effect Friday, but three condemned inmates have asked a judge to stop the state from using it to execute anyone.
Death row inmates Ralph Stevens Baze, Thomas Clyde Bowling and Brian Keith Moore filed a motion Friday through public defender David Barron in Franklin Circuit Court asking a judge to declare that the state violated a Kentucky Supreme Court order in the way it adopted the new method.
The challenge is set to be heard May 19.
The state's high court barred Kentucky from conducting any executions in November, finding that officials improperly adopted the three-drug lethal injection method.
The new challenge raises similar concerns - claiming that the state failed to spell out how the chemicals would be injected, authorizing people not qualified to insert intravenous lines to handle the execution and not allowing death row inmates to address a public hearing about the three-drug protocol.
"Each of these failures renders the department's regulations invalid and leaves us still without a validly adopted execution protocol," Barron said.
Warrants were pending on three inmates when the old protocol was struck down.
"Kentucky inmates challenge new execution method," is the title of the Louisville Courier-Journal article by Andrew Wolfson.
Three death row prisoners are challenging Kentucky's revised protocol for lethal injections, which took effect Friday, claiming it violates the law in part by failing to spell out the volume and concentration of the lethal chemicals.
Their motion, filed Friday in Franklin Circuit Court, also says that the rules conflict with state law by allowing unauthorized people to insert intravenous lines and by allowing viewing curtains to be closed during portions of executions.
The challange, filed by the Department of Public Advocacy on behalf of condemned prisoners Ralph Baze, Thomas Clyde Bowling and Brian Keith Moore, will be heard May 19.
The inmates are asking Judge Phillip Shepherd to declare that the state violated a Kentucky Supreme Court order in the way it adopted the new procedures. The motion asks that the protocol be declared invalid and that the state be barred from using it.
Lisa Lamb, a spokeswoman for the Corrections Department, which is named as the defendant in the motion, said it had just received a copy and was reviewing it.
In November the court temporarily barred the state from conducting any executions, holding that officials improperly adopted the three-drug lethal injection method.
With the new protocol now in effect, the latest challenge raises similar concerns.
And:
The state embarked on re-implementing its three-drug cocktail in January by holding public hearings and taking public comments. Since then, the state Justice Cabinet, which oversees the protocol, adopted some changes, and a pair of legislative committees approved the method.The challenge filed Friday is the latest by Baze, who was the lead plaintiff in a case the U.S. Supreme Court used in 2008 to rule that the lethal injection protocol used by nearly three dozen states did not amount to cruel and unusual punishment.
Kentucky has put three inmates to death since capital punishment was reintroduced in 1976. Harold McQueen was executed in the electric chair in 1997 for killing a convenience store clerk in 1981. Eddie Lee Harper was executed by lethal injection in 1999, and Marco Allen Chapman was executed by lethal injection in November.
From Ohio, AP writer Andrew Welsh-Huggins writes, "Condemned Ohio inmate claims tolerance to lethal drug could deny him painless execution," via WXIN-TV.
A condemned Ohio inmate who fatally shot a man while hitchhiking claims his tolerance to a lethal injection drug could deprive him of a painless execution.
Death row inmate Michael Beuke (BYOO'-kee), scheduled to die Thursday, argues in court papers he has developed a tolerance to one of the drugs used in Ohio's backup injection method.
Beuke says a barbiturate he takes for a seizure disorder could limit the effectiveness of midazolam, the first drug called for in the backup method which injects drugs into muscles.
Beuke made his claim Friday in federal court in Columbus.
Earlier lethal injection news from Kentucky and Ohio are at the links; related posts are in the lethal injection index. More on Baze v. Rees , the 2008 Kentucky case in which the Supreme Court ruled on the constitutionality of lethal injection, is via Oyez.
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