The Supreme Court, within a brief period from Wednesday to Thursday evening, declined to block four separate executions across four states for prisoners on death row.
Within that period, the high court rejected final appeals from death row inmates Murray Hooper in Arizona, Stephen Barbee in Texas, and Richard Fairchild in Oklahoma. Barber and Hooper were both executed Wednesday, and Fairchild was executed Thursday.
But the high court’s last death row-related ruling in the series of rejections came with a late 11:20 p.m. EST 6-3 decision denying an appeal from Alabama inmate Kenneth Smith, in which three Democratic-appointed justices, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan, said they would have kept an appeals court stay that blocked the execution of Smith in place.
ALABAMA HALTS EXECUTION AFTER PROBLEM ESTABLISHING IV
Alabama officials proceeded with plans to execute Smith, who was convicted of a 1988 murder-for-hire, shortly after the high court decision. However, the execution was called off when problems occurred with inserting intravenous lines to administer a lethal injection.
Prison staff had just 90 minutes to complete the execution to meet the state’s midnight deadline to complete the execution before Smith’s death warrant expired. Notably, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit stayed Smith’s death sentence because his counsel persuaded the judges that the executioner would have “extreme difficulty in accessing his veins,” which is precisely what happened Thursday evening.
It was the second time since September that Alabama commenced an execution only to cancel it midway through the process due to complications related to inserting an IV line. The previous inmate to have such complications was Alana Eugene Miller, whose lawyers described him at the time as being the “only living execution survivor” in the nation, making it at least two now in the case of Smith. Miller’s case is still ongoing, but the Alabama Attorney General’s office has requested a new execution date.
Smith’s attorneys asked U.S. District Court Judge R. Austin Huffaker Jr. on Friday to order the state to preserve evidence from the failed execution attempt, a request that Huffaker granted later in the afternoon.
The judge ordered the state to “make immediate efforts to locate and preserve evidence concerning the attempted execution, including but not limited to notes, emails, texts, and used medical supplies such as syringes, swabs, scalpels, and IV-lines,” according to court filings.
The SCOTUS says that the death penalty is supposed to be reserved for the “worst of the worst.” 11 of the 12 jurors at Kenny Smith’s trial believed he was NOT the worst of the worst and voted for life. They were overridden by the judge. SCOTUS is allowing the execution to happen.
— Sister Helen Prejean (@helenprejean) November 18, 2022
Sister Helen Prejean, an anti-death penalty activist and spiritual adviser to prisoners on death row, tweeted that the Supreme Court has maintained the death penalty is supposed to be reserved for the “worst of the worst,” citing a concurrence by Justice Clarence Thomas in a 2015 opinion in which the court ruled 5-4 that lethal injections using midazolam to kill prisoners do not constitute cruel and unusual punishment.
Prejean said that “11 of the 12 jurors at Kenny Smith’s trial believed he was NOT the worst of the worst and voted for life. They were overridden by the judge. SCOTUS is allowing the execution to happen.”
However, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R), who is supportive of the death penalty, expressed remorse Thursday for the failure to execute Smith, saying, “Some three decades ago, a promise was made to Elizabeth’s family that justice would be served through a lawfully imposed death sentence.”
As of Nov. 17, there have been 16 executions of state prisoners this year, five of which happened in Texas and another five that happened in Oklahoma. Just 11 prisoners were executed in the United States last year, while 17 were killed in 2020 and 22 in 2019.
Although the mentioned inmates were given death sentences under the respective state jurisdictions they were punished in, the U.S. previously suspended federal executions in 2003 until such procedures resumed in 2019 under the Trump administration.
The Biden administration has continued capital punishment at the federal level since taking office in 2021, though the president has vowed to “pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level,” according to a list of campaign promises he made in 2020.
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The Federal Death Penalty Prohibition Act of 2021 was introduced by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) last year, but due to congressional rules, the bill will have expired and would require reintroduction when the new Congress begins in January.
At least 16 federal executions have occurred since the resumption of the practice, all by lethal injection. Thirteen of those executions happened within a six-month period between July 2020 and January 2021, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
