Supreme Court appears divided in death penalty case

By James Vicini

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lethal injection procedures pose a danger of cruelly inhumane executions with excruciating pain, an attorney for two death row inmates told the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday in a capital punishment case that has drawn worldwide attention.

But attorneys for the state of Kentucky and the Bush administration defended the three-drug cocktail currently used in nearly all U.S. executions and said the drugs, if administered properly, would result in a painless death.

Opponents argue that inmates are often not rendered fully unconscious by the first drug in the cocktail as they are supposed to be before the second drug, a paralytic, is administered. They suffer when they are conscious while the paralytic and the third drug, which burns as it enters the system, are given.

The justices appeared closely divided between conservative and liberal factions during the arguments that represented the first time the high court has considered a specific means of execution since it upheld the use of firing squads in 1879.

While the session focused on the narrow issue of whether to uphold the three-drug mix or require some other alternative, the case has prompted a nationwide debate on capital punishment itself in one of the few democracies that still permit it.

Executions across the United States have come to a temporary halt since the court agreed in late September to decide the case and fell last year to a 13-year low of 42. Thirty-six states now have the death penalty.

Last month, New Jersey became the first state to abolish the death penalty since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.

Of the four conservatives on the Supreme Court, Justice Antonin Scalia vigorously questioned Donald Verrilli, the lawyer representing the two death row inmates.

Scalia questioned Verrilli's argument that the state must use the method of execution that causes the least amount of pain.

ELECTROCUTION, FIRING SQUAD ALLOWED

"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," Scalia said.

The standard method of lethal injection involves administering sodium thiopental, which causes unconsciousness, pancuronium bromide, which results in paralysis, and potassium chloride, which stops the heart.

"I'm terribly troubled by the fact that the second drug is what seems to cause all risk of excruciating pain, and seems to be almost totally unnecessary," Justice John Paul Stevens said.

Verrilli proposed as an alternative using just a single dose of the barbiturate sodium thiopental, along with adopting other safeguards, such as more effective monitoring of the inmate by trained personnel.

The alternative drug would eliminate the latter two drugs and the danger of conscious asphyxiation and excruciating pain.