The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday allowed a challenge by an Alabama death row inmate who sued months before surviving a botched execution claiming that the state's troubled lethal injection process would violate constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment.
In an unusual case that has returned to the justices because the execution of convicted murderer Kenneth Smith failed, they turned away an appeal by Alabama officials of a lower court's decision to revive his lawsuit seeking to block the state from putting him to death through lethal injection. Smith instead is seeking to be executed using another method.
Smith, 57, filed his suit in federal court last August - months before his botched execution. The lawsuit alleged that the state's lethal injection protocol would subject him to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the U.S. Constitution's Eighth Amendment based on problems Alabama officials encountered in putting prior condemned inmates to death, including accessing veins to insert intravenous lines.
Smith is seeking to require Alabama to execute him by inhaling nitrogen, a gas that would deprive his body of oxygen. Smith has said the protocol would substantially reduce the risk of aborted executions or pain, such as a sensation of drowning or choking. State officials that night repeatedly tried but failed to place the necessary intravenous lines or a central line in his collarbone area before calling off the execution after 11 p.m.
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