Supreme Court to hear Florida lethal-injection case

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed Wednesday to decide when death-row inmates may challenge lethal injection as a method of capital punishment, in a surprise decision issued after the justices dramatically stopped the execution of a Florida prisoner who was already strapped to a gurney preparing to die.

Clarence Hill, 48, convicted of murdering a Pensacola, Fla., police officer in 1982, had refused a final meal and had been hooked up to intravenous lines when the Supreme Court stayed his execution. The court said it would hear his claim that he should have an opportunity to argue that his civil rights would be violated because the chemicals used to execute him would cause excessive pain.

It is a claim that has been pressed with growing frequency by capital defense lawyers around the country in recent years — but that has generally not succeeded, either in lower courts or at the Supreme Court.

Thirty-seven of the 38 death-penalty states use lethal injection, as do the U.S. military and the federal government. Since the chemical mixtures in all jurisdictions are similar to those used in Florida, a victory for Hill at the Supreme Court could tie up the death penalty across the country in litigation, at least temporarily, legal analysts said.

"It certainly could be a mess," said Douglas Berman, a professor of law at Ohio State University who specializes in criminal law. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, an anti-death penalty organization, at least 25 inmates are scheduled for execution between now and the end of June, when the court would probably issue a decision.

The Hill case does not ask the court to rule directly on the constitutionality of lethal injection, which states adopted as an alternative to hanging, gas, electrocution and shooting, even though Hill claims that the particular mix of chemicals used in Florida would cause him an unconstitutional degree of suffering.

Rather, the case raises a procedural problem: what recourse there should be for a prisoner who finds out at or near the last minute that the method by which the state proposes to execute him might be "cruel and unusual" punishment.

Meanwhile, Texas executed a man by lethal injection Wednesday for the 1992 murders of four people during the robbery of a Houston drug dealer.

Marion Dudley, 33, was condemned in the slayings of Jose Tovar, 32; Frank Farias, 17; Jessica Quinones, 19, and Audrey Brown, 21, on June 20, 1992.

Dudley was the first person executed in Texas this year. He was the 356th person put to death since the state resumed capital punishment in 1982.

Material on the Texas execution was provided by Reuters.