AELE LAW LIBRARY OF CASE SUMMARIES:
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Death Penalty
A Texas death row inmate sought to prohibit his execution until the state allowed his preferred spiritual advisor, a Buddhist priest, to be physically present in the execution chamber at the time of execution. After the petition was denied, he filed a federal civil rights lawsuit over the issue. The motion for a stay of execution was denied as untimely, a result upheld by the federal appeals court. The court ruled that held that the proper time for raising such claims has long since passed. The execution date was set on November 29, 2018 for March 28, 2019; and by his lawyer’s admission, he had waited until February 28 to first request that the state allow his Buddhist priest to not just meet with him prior to entering the execution chamber and watch from the viewing room, but actually enter the execution chamber with him; and then waited until March 20 -- eight days before the scheduled execution -- to raise his First Amendment and Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act claims. These claims were not brought before the federal courts until March 26. The appeals court also took note of the multiple warnings the plaintiff's lawyer had received in the past for filing motions at the last moment. Subsequently, however, the U.S. Supreme Court, by 7-2, granted a stay of execution “pending the timely filing and disposition of a petition for a writ of certiorari unless the state permits Murphy's Buddhist spiritual advisor or another Buddhist reverend of the state's choosing to accompany Murphy in the execution chamber during the execution.” Murphy v. Collier, #19-70007, 919 F.3d 913 (5th Cir. 2019), stay granted, Murphy v. Collier, #18A985, 139 S. Ct. 1111, 203 L. Ed. 2d 633, 2019 U.S. Lexis 2298, 2019 WL 1410989.
Under prior precedent, a state’s refusal to alter its execution protocol can violate the Eighth Amendment only if an inmate identifies a “feasible, readily implemented” alternative procedure that would “significantly reduce a substantial risk of severe pain.” The state of Missouri planned to execute the plaintiff inmate by lethal injection using a single drug, pentobarbital. He presented an as-applied Eighth Amendment challenge, alleging that, regardless of whether the protocol would cause excruciating pain for all prisoners, it would cause him severe pain because of his particular medical condition. A federal appeals court and the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the rejection of that challenge. The Eighth Amendment does not guarantee a prisoner a painless death. To establish that a state’s chosen method cruelly “superadds” pain to the death sentence, a prisoner must show a feasible and readily implemented alternative method that would significantly reduce a substantial risk of severe pain and that the state has refused to adopt without a legitimate penological reason. Traditionally accepted methods of execution are not necessarily unconstitutional because an arguably more humane method becomes available. Precedent foreclosed the plaintiff’s argument that methods posing a “substantial and particular risk of grave suffering” when applied to a particular inmate due to his “unique medical condition” should be considered “categorically” cruel. Identifying an available alternative is a requirement of all Eighth Amendment method-of-execution claims alleging cruel pain. The plaintiff failed to present a triable question on the viability of nitrogen hypoxia as an alternative to Missouri’s protocol. He merely pointed to reports from other states indicating the need for additional study. Missouri had a “legitimate” interest in choosing not to be the first to experiment with a new, “untried and untested” method of execution. Bucklew v. Precythe, #17-8151, 2019 U.S. Lexis 2477.
A prisoner on death row in Alabama filed a civil rights complaint and emergency motion for stay of execution, claiming that excluding his Muslim Imam from the execution chamber at the time of his execution in favor of a Christian chaplain violated his rights under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) and that requiring the presence of a Christian chaplain in the execution chamber at the time of his execution also violated his rights under RLUIPA. He further argued that Alabama’s practice of requiring a Christian chaplain in the execution chamber, while forbidding clerics of other faiths, violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, and that refusing to honor his late election for nitrogen hypoxia as the method of his execution, where his lateness resulted from his religious beliefs, also violated RLUIPA. A federal appeals court held that Alabama’s prison officials favored one religious denomination to the detriment of all others, that they had made only general claims about their compelling interest, and they had offered nothing remotely establishing that their policy was narrowly tailored to further that interest. The appeals court held that the prisoner was substantially likely to succeed on the merits of his Establishment Clause claim given the little evidence in the record to support the government’s interest and the fit between those interests and the state's policy. In this case, given the paucity of evidence, the court concluded that it was not altogether surprising that the state had not clearly argued that prisoner knew or should have known sooner that his religious beliefs would not be accommodated. Therefore, the appeals court granted the petition for an emergency stay of execution. The U.S. Supreme Court, by a 5-4 vote, did not agree. It vacated the stay, allowing the prisoner to be executed by lethal injection without his Imam present. Ray v. Commissioner, #19-10405, 2019 U.S. App. Lexis 3664 (11th Cir.), vacated, Dunn v. Ray, #18A815, 139 S. Ct. 145, 203 L. Ed. 2d 145, 2019 U.S. Lexis 817, 2019 WL 488293.
A federal trial court properly denied a motion to dismiss the plaintiff’s claims filed by the Director of the Missouri Department of Corrections. The plaintiff, an investigative journalist who was critical of the state’s execution procedures, claimed that the Departments procedures for inviting citizens to witness executions violated his rights under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. After he wrote several articles criticizing the state’s execution practices, the Director allegedly never responded to his requests to witness any executions. The plaintiff had standing to pursue his claim as he suffered the injury of being excluded, along with all applicants sharing his particular viewpoint, from viewing Missouri’s executions. The 0laintiff could proceed with his lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of this exclusion. McDaniel v. Precythe, #17-1055, 2018 U.S. App. Lexis 20883 (8th Cir.).
Each of the plaintiff inmates was sentenced to death in Pennsylvania and housed
on the death row of a state prison in solitary confinement. Each of their death
sentences was vacated, but several years went by before they were resentenced
to life without parole. They sued seeking damages for the time spent in
solitary confinement on death row after their death sentences were vacated,
claiming that this continued solitary confinement without meaningful review
violated Fourteenth Amendment due process. A federal appeals court upheld
summary judgment for the defendants. While the court found that there was a
constitutionally protected liberty interest that prohibits the state from
continuing to house inmates in solitary
confinement on death row after they have been granted resentencing hearings,
without meaningful review of the continuing placement, that principle was not
previously clearly established, so prison officials were entitled to qualified
immunity. Williams v. Secretary Pennsylvania
Department of Corrections, #14-1469, 2017 U.S. App.
Lexis 2327 (3rd Cir.).
Reversing the
trial court's grant of habeas corpus relief to a death row inmate, a federal
appeals court held that the court could not consider, during habeas corpus
review, a "novel constitutional theory" that California's
post-conviction system review of death sentences creates such a long delay that
only an arbitrary number of prisoners are actually ever executed, in violation
of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. Jones v.
Davis, #14-56373, 2015 U.S. App. Lexis 19698 (9th Cir.).
The U.S. Supreme Court
rejected an Eighth Amendment constitutional challenge by death penalty inmates
to Oklahoma's practice of using a 500-milligram dose of midazolam as the first
drug it administered, before it administered a paralytic agent and potassium
chloride in carrying out executions. The first drug made it a virtual certainty
that the prisoner being executed would be unconscious when the second and third
drugs were administered, and the plaintiff inmates failed to show that there
was a known available alternative method of carrying out an execution that
would provide a substantially less severe risk of pain. Glossip v. Gross,
#14-7955, 2015 U.S. Lexis 4255.
Prisoners on death row in Missouri challenged the
constitutionality of the state's lethal-injection protocol, which was altered
to use a single drug rather than a combination of three (an anesthetic, a
paralyzing agent, and a drug to stop the heart) when the first drug became unavailable.
While the challenge was pending, the protocol was revised from the drug
propofol to compounded pentobarbital, and the plaintiffs amended their
complaint to allege that the new drug constituted cruel and unusual punishment
and that the defendants were deliberately indifferent to their medical need for
their executions not to inflict gratuitous pain. The plaintiffs failed to meet
their burden of showing that the use of the drug rose to the level of
"sure or very likely" to cause serious harm or severe pain. They also
failed to show that they had a First Amendment right to disclosure of
information about the identities of the pharmacy that compounds the drug and
its suppliers. Zink v. Lombardi, #14-2220, 2015 U.S. App. Lexis 3550 (8th
Cir.).
A trial court granted summary judgment to a
Virginia death row prisoner enjoining prison officials to either improve his
conditions of confinement or provide him with an individualized classification
determination for his prison housing. A federal appeals court reversed, finding
that the mere presence of harsh and atypical confinement conditions, by
themselves, do not give rise to a liberty interest in avoiding them. Further,
in the circumstances of the case, where state law mandates the conditions of
confinement to be imposed on prisoners convicted of certain crimes and
receiving certain sentences, such as housing on death row for those sentenced
to death, those conditions of confinement are, by definition, "ordinary
incidents of prison life" for those prisoners. No violation was shown of
the plaintiff's procedural due process rights. Prieto v. Clarke, #13-8021, 780
F.3d 245 (4th Cir. 2015).
A prisoner was sentenced to death after being
convicted of murder, kidnapping, and rape. He challenged Missouri's lethal
injection method as violating his Eighth Amendment rights. A federal appeals
court found that he could proceed with that claim because it was not
"patently obvious" that he could not prevail on his claim that his
serious medical condition (cavernous hemangioma) created a unique risk that the
lethal injection would result in excruciating pain, amounting to cruel and
unusual punishment. There was also support for his assertion that the state
unreasonably refused to change its regular method of execution to a
"feasible, readily implemented" alternative that would
"significantly reduce" the substantial risk of pain. Bucklew v.
Lombardi, #14-2163, 2015 U.S. App. Lexis 3549 (8th Cir.).
Two Pennsylvania newspapers sued seeking expanded
access to prisoner executions. They asserted that various restrictions on
access imposed by correctional officials violated the First Amendment right to
report on matters of public interest. A settlement was reached allowing
witnesses, such as reporters, to see and hear inside the execution chamber from
the moment the prisoner enters until the time he or she is declared dead. The
settlement serves the right of officials to turn off the sound system if the
inmate attempts to make malicious or threatening remarks aimed at the witnesses.
The Philadelphia Inquirer v. Wetzel, #12-cv-01817, U.S. Dist Ct. (M.D. Pa. Oct.
18, 2013).
The lethal injection protocol adopted by California
correctional officials was invalidated as it failed to substantially comply
with requirements of the California Administrative Procedure Act (APA). The
court enjoined the execution of any prisoner by lethal injection until new
regulations were adopted that did comply with the procedural requirements of
the statute. Sims v. Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation,
#A135290 2013 Cal. App. Lexis 424.
The intended use of imported sodium thiopental, a
foreign manufactured non-FDA approved drug in the plaintiff inmate's execution
was insufficient to establish a constitutional violation. The plaintiff failed
to show that the drug would result in an adverse reaction, and did not
plausibly claim that the state would inject the plaintiff, while conscious,
with painful lethal drugs. Cook v. Brewer, #11-15303, 2011 U.S. App. Lexis 6753
(9th Cir.).
Death row inmates failed to show that Arizona's
three-drug lethal injection execution protocol violated the Eighth Amendment.
They could not prove that it was sure or very likely to cause serious pain and
suffering. Dickens v. Brewer, #09-16539, 2011 U.S. App. Lexis 2543 (9th Cir.).
U.S. Supreme Court rules, by 5-4, that imposing a
death sentence for the rape of a child where the crime did not involve and was
not intended to result in the child's death violates the Eighth Amendment's
prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. Kennedy v. Louisiana, No. 07-343,
2008 U.S. Lexis 5262.
Kentucky's use of lethal injection to execute
death row prisoners did not constitute cruel and unusual punishment in
violation of the Eighth Amendment. Baze v. Rees, No. 07–5439, 128 S. Ct. 1520
(2008).
A prisoner awaiting execution failed to show that
he would experience anything more than a "loss of consciousness"
during the lethal injection execution, based on evidence concerning Virginia's
prior executions using that method. Reducing pain and discomfort during such an
execution may well be good goals, the federal court noted, but there is not
constitutional requirement that the carrying out of a death sentence be
accompanied by a surgical "level of comfort." Emmett v. Johnson, No.
3:07CV227, 2007 U.S. Dist. Lexis 40047 (E.D. Va.).
Death row inmate could proceed on his federal
civil rights lawsuit claiming that Florida's procedures for execution by lethal
injection violate the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments because the initial drug
administered during it could allow him to suffer severe pain while still
conscious, a second drug results in paralysis of the lungs, and a third drug
essentially causes a fatal heart attack. Hill v. Crosby, No. 06-10621, 2006
U.S. App. Lexis 22082 (11th Cir.). [N/R]
Previously in this case, the U.S. Supreme Court
ruled that the prisoner's constitutional challenge to the procedure could be
brought under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983, and did not have to be pursued as an action
seeking a writ of habeas corpus. Hill v. McDonough, No. 05-8794, 126 S. Ct.
2096 (2006). [N/R]
Allegedly suicide-prone prisoner failed to show a
causal connection between the pending execution of another inmate and the
alleged increased risk that he and other suicide-prone prisoners might attempt
to harm themselves. Trial court properly dismissed his lawsuit, which he sought
to bring as a class action on behalf of suicide-prone prisoners, seeking to bar
the execution. Ziemba v. Rell, No. 05-8903, 409 F.3d 553 (2nd Cir. 2005). [N/R]
New Jersey correctional officials could not
implement new regulations eliminating the requirement of the presence of an
emergency cart with medical equipment and supplies at the scene of
executions--for the purpose of reviving the inmate in the event of last minute
stays--without providing an explanation of its reasoning. Defendant officials
were required to present "strong" medical evidence that the effects
of the lethal injections used were irreversible. Officials would also be required
to show how new restrictions on media access to and filming of executions were
justified by legitimate penological, safety, and security concerns. In Re.
Readoption of N.J.A.C. 10A:23, 842 A.2d 207 (N.J. Super. A.D. 2004). [N/R]
Texas prisoner on death row could pursue federal
civil rights lawsuit claiming that the state's protocol for lethal injection
violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment,
since that claim challenged the method of execution rather than the death
sentence itself. Court finds that the prisoner was entitled to a temporary
restraining order staying his execution by this method. Harris v. Johnson, 323
F. Supp. 2d 797 (S.D. Tex. 2004). [N/R]
Federal appeals court upholds injunctive orders
requiring the remedying of "filthy" conditions, inadequate mental
health care, inadequate ventilation, and malfunctioning toilets on death row in
Mississippi prison, but rejects a number of other injunctive orders by trial
court, including requirement of a preventative maintenance program, as not
supported by the evidence or improper micro-management. Russell v. Johnson,
#03-60529, 2004 U.S. App. Lexis 13890 (5th Cir. 2004). [2004 JB Aug]
U.S. Supreme Court, in case involving death-row
prisoner's challenge to Alabama state's use of a death penalty procedure
requiring an incision into his arm or leg to access his severely compromised
veins, rules that federal civil rights statute, 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 is an
"appropriate" manner to assert an Eighth Amendment claim challenging
confinement conditions in prison and seeking injunctive relief. Nelson v.
Campbell, #03-6821, 124 S. Ct. 2117 (2004).[2004 JB Jul]
Prisoner was not entitled to a stay of execution
on the basis of his claim that if a lethal injection was administered to him in
an improper way, he could experience severe pain without any visible indication
of it. In Re Williams, #04-3014, 359 F.3d 811 (6th Cir. 2004). [N/R]
Prison regulation that prevented journalists who
attended and reported on executions from viewing the lethal injection
procedures prior to the actual administration of the injection violated the
public's First Amendment right to view executions from the time the condemned
prisoner was first brought into the execution chamber. California First
Amendment Coalition v. Woodford, #00-16752, 299 F.3d 868 (9th Cir. 2002). [N/R]
A prisoner on death row was not entitled to an
injunction preventing the state Department of Corrections from executing him
until his possible "unnecessary" pain and suffering during the
process was minimized. A federal appeals court upheld the finding that the
plaintiff's claim, filed as a federal civil rights lawsuit, was properly
construed to be a second habeas petition, which he had improperly filed with
the trial court without seeking prior permission from the appeals court to file
an additional application, so that the trial court had no jurisdiction to hear
the claim. (The ruling came on August 14, 2002, the prisoner's execution date).
Fugate v. Department of Corrections, No. 02-14400, 2002 U.S. App. Lexis 164611
(11th Cir.). [N/R]
Prisoner sentenced to death was not entitled to a
temporary restraining order based on his claim that prison officials planned to
violate his right to privacy by permitting an "excessive number" of
his victim's family members to view his execution and by improperly allowing
recording equipment in the execution chamber. Prisoner did not show a
substantial likelihood of success on his underlying federal civil rights claim.
Coleman v. Wilkinson, No. 02AP-456, 770 N.E.2d 637 (Ohio App. 2002). [N/R]
286:148 Prisoner who had
been on death row for twenty-two years could not assert that the frequent
delays and stays in his execution constituted "torture" or cruel and
unusual punishment when the main reason for the delays were his own pursuit of
every possible avenue to overturn his death sentence and filing of motions
seeking the delays he now complained of. Faulder v. Johnson, 99 F. Supp. 2d 774
(S.D. Tex. 1999).
[N/R] Court rejects
argument that execution by hanging is cruel and unusual punishment in violation
of Eighth Amendment. Langford v. Day, 110 F.3d 1380 (9th Cir. 1997). » Editor's
Note: For a prior decision reaching the same result, see Campbell v. Wood, 18 F.3d
662 (9th Cir. 1994) (en banc).