WASHINGTON — Supreme Court justices reacted skeptically Monday to the claim that the lethal injections used to carry out executions in the United States were flawed in practice and amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.
Death penalty critics had hoped that the court would declare unconstitutional the use of a three-drug compound that has been the standard means of execution since the early 1980s. They say the use of a paralyzing drug could mask the fact that the condemned man may suffer searing pain when given a heart-stopping drug.
Such a ruling, if handed down by the high court, would not spell the end of capital punishment or bar the use of lethal injections. But, defense lawyers argued, switching to a single powerful barbiturate could result in painless deaths. Veterinarians put horses to death using just such a barbiturate, they said.
None of those arguments appeared to gain much traction during Monday's argument in a closely watched Kentucky case. Instead, in their comments and questions, most of the justices said they were not convinced Kentucky's method was flawed.
They also said they had seen no strong evidence that a single barbiturate would work better. Several of the conservative justices said they saw this attack on lethal injections as part of the long campaign to abolish capital punishment altogether.
"This is an execution, not surgery," Justice Antonin Scalia told the attorney who was representing two Kentucky inmates who say the use of the three-drug compound poses "an unnecessary risk of pain" to the dying man.
"Where does that come from, that you must find the method of execution that causes the least pain?" Scalia continued. "We have approved electrocution. We have approved death by firing squad. I expect both of those have more possibilities of painful death than the protocol here."
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said he saw no problem as long as Kentucky followed its approved method. "If the two grams of sodium pentothal is properly administered [at the start] in virtually every case there would be a humane death," he said.
But Donald B. Verrilli Jr., the Washington lawyer for the Kentucky inmates, said there was no guarantee it would be properly administered because prison officials did not have medical training. "When this goes wrong . . . the pain that is inflicted is tortuous, excruciating," he said.
