Supreme Court rulings won't end lawsuits

Last week, Delaware attorneys seeking abolishment of lethal injection filed court papers saying an inmate three years ago suffered inhumane treatment during a botched execution that left him awake but paralyzed.

Advocates for capital punishment, meanwhile, say lethal injection is humane and claim the justices' decision as victory.

Besides, said Kent Scheidegger of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, execution is a punishment, not a medical procedure.

"We're dealing with a method that is relatively painless. There's no reason it should be totally without pain," he said. "There's a difference between saying we don't torture people to death and guaranteeing that death will be painless for a convicted murderer."

Thirty-five of 36 death penalty states use lethal injection. Legal fights cover myriad battlefronts--from attacking the medical qualifications of those administering the drugs to questions about whether the chemicals used comply with controlled substances laws.

Since the much-anticipated Supreme Court ruling, six states have moved to reinstate executions. There have been nine thus far--two in Georgia, two in South Carolina, two in Virginia and the rest in Mississippi, Oklahoma and Texas. Another execution is scheduled Tuesday in Florida.

On their own, some state courts have already said lethal injection is unconstitutional.

Weeks after the Kentucky ruling, a judge in neighboring Ohio invalidated that state's three-drug protocol and ordered the use of a single, powerful barbiturate that would put an inmate to sleep--much in the same way that veterinarians put down animals.

In many lethal injection appeals, inmates have supported that method.

Kentucky inmates Ralph Baze and Thomas Bowling Jr., both convicted of double murders, made the same argument. Justices disagreed, saying state standards and procedures had worked because the condemned died within 15 seconds, without incident.