The Supreme Court ruled Monday that the Constitution does not guarantee a “painless death” for condemned murderers, deciding that a Missouri inmate may be executed by a lethal injection despite a rare condition that could cause him to suffocate.
, when Justice Anthony M. Kennedy cast a fifth vote with the four liberals. But after hearing the full appeal, the court rejected his constitutional claim, with Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh — who joined the court after Kennedy’s retirement — in the majority with the other four conservatives.
“The 8th Amendment has never been understood to guarantee a condemned inmate a painless death,” Gorsuch said in the courtroom. “What the 8th Amendment does guarantee is a method of execution that’s not ‘cruel and unusual.’ And ever since the founding, people have understood that the only way to tell if a method is cruel is to compare it with other known and available alternatives, to see if the state is inflicting substantially more pain than necessary to carry out its lawful sentence.
He said Bucklew’s lawyers failed to present evidence that nitrogen gas would be less painful. It would take longer for him to be rendered unconscious with gas than with an injection, Gorsuch said. “No state has ever actually carried out an execution using nitrogen gas,” Gorsuch said. “Nor does the Constitution require a state to develop a novel method of execution.”
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