Snippets - In the News - April 17th 2008

• Christian Science Monitor, Supreme Court Upholds Lethal Injection [April 17^th 2008] …

Lethal-injection procedures in Kentucky do not violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. In a 7-to-2 decision announced on Wednesday, the US Supreme Court upheld the injection procedures used by Kentucky officials to execute condemned prisoners. The majority justices ruled that the existing procedures do not pose a ‘substantial risk of serious harm.’ The action opens way for an end to a de facto national moratorium on lethal injection executions that has been in place since the fall. In deciding the case, Baze v. Rees, the high court established a new, more rigorous constitutional test of execution methods under the Eighth Amendment. But the justices declined to embrace a significantly stricter constitutional test that lawyers for death-row inmate Ralph Baze had urged.