Latest update November 1st, 2026 10:45 AM
The Supreme Court rules that a murderer has no right to a “painless death”
CASES DEALING with methods of execution produce the grisliest Supreme Court decisions.
Wilkerson v Utah, the first such case probing the limits of the Eighth Amendment’s bar on “cruel and unusual punishments”, held that while being “embowelled alive, beheaded and quartered” are unconstitutional, firing squads are allowable.
That was in 1879.
In 2008, lethal injection was deemed acceptable in Baze v Rees. In a wrinkle on Baze in 2015, the Supreme Court rejected an inmate’s claim that a drug in Oklahoma’s lethal-injection cocktail entailed a risk of extreme and extended suffering.
Everyone may “wish to die a painless death”, Justice Samuel Alito wrote in Glossip v Gross, but “many do not have that good fortune”. Letting inmates escape the death penalty just because their execution method may entail a risk of severe pain “would effectively outlaw the death penalty altogether”.
With this rather fresh precedent on the books, the result in Bucklew v Precythe, a case decided by a 5-4 vote on April 1, is perhaps not surprising. But the hard-hearted tone of the majority opinion is nonetheless shocking.
Russell Bucklew was sent to Missouri’s death row in 1996 after threatening and raping his ex-girlfriend, shooting at her son and killing the man who gave them refuge.
Like most states that still practice capital punishment, Missouri puts its worst criminals to death with lethal injection. But Mr Bucklew has a rare medical condition that could make such an execution extremely painful.
In the words of Justice Neil Gorsuch, author of the majority opinion, Mr Bucklew’s cavernous hemangioma causes tumours comprised of “clumps of blood vessels” to grow in his head, neck and throat.
The tumours are easily pricked and often bleed.
During lethal injection, Mr Bucklew’s doctors say, the tumours would probably rupture and flood his airway, suffocating him for minutes. That, his lawyers argue, amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.
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