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TWO US states moved to resume executions on Monday after the US Supreme Court upheld the use of midazolam in lethal injections.
Attorneys-general in Oklahoma and Florida asked courts on Monday to allow executions to proceed, just hours after the Supreme Court’s judges voted five to four in a case from Oklahoma that midazolam can be used in executions without violating the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.
Executions last year in Arizona, Ohio and Oklahoma took longer than usual and raised concerns that the drug did not perform its intended task of putting inmates into a coma-like sleep.
Oklahoma first used the drug last year in the execution of Clayton Lockett, who took 43 minutes to die while he writhed, moaned and clenched his teeth.
Two of the dissenting Supreme Court judges, Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, said for the first time that they thought it was “highly likely” that the death penalty itself is unconstitutional.
