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Some Points of Agreement in Baze

By Kent Scheidegger et al.

Baze is one of those dreaded splintered opinions where we will have to pick our way through to figure out what the law is for some time to come. Even so, there are a number of important points on which the Court not only has a coherent majority but actually is unanimous. These are worth noting. The plaintiffs got no support for a standard of "unnecessary risk" in the sense that any method of execution could be challenged indefinitely into the future merely by showing that some other method had less risk of pain. Justice Ginsburg writes at page 4, "Proof of 'a slightly or marginally safer alternative' is, as the plurality notes, insufficient." No one endorses the argument that monitoring by a person qualified to assess "anesthetic depth" is required...continue to full post

Full post as published by Crime and Consequences on April 16, 2008 (boomark / email).