Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/14pdf/14-7955_aplc.pdf
Page Number: 125.0

Cite as:  576 U. S. ____ (2015) 

29 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

executions  in  the  face  of  changing  circumstances.    See 
ante,  at  4–6,  27–28.    It  is  true,  as  the  Court  details,  that 
States have faced “practical obstacle[s]” to obtaining lethal
injection  drugs  since  Baze  was  decided.    Ante,  at  4.  One 
study concluded that recent years have seen States change
their  protocols  “with  a  frequency  that  is  unprecedented 
among execution methods in this country’s history.”  Denno, 
Lethal  Injection  Chaos  Post-Baze,  102  Geo.  L. J.  1331, 
1335 (2014).

But  why  such  developments  compel  the  Court’s  imposi­
tion  of  further  burdens  on  those  facing  execution  is  a 
mystery.  Petitioners  here  had  no  part  in  creating  the 
shortage  of  execution  drugs;  it  is  odd  to  punish  them  for
the  actions  of  pharmaceutical  companies  and  others  who 
seek  to  disassociate  themselves  from  the  death  penalty—
actions which are, of course, wholly lawful.  Nor, certainly,
should  these  rapidly  changing  circumstances  give  us  any 
greater  confidence  that  the  execution  methods  ultimately
selected  will  be  sufficiently  humane  to  satisfy  the  Eighth 
Amendment.  Quite the contrary.  The execution protocols 
States hurriedly devise as they scramble to locate new and
untested drugs, see supra, at 3, are all the more likely to 
be  cruel  and  unusual—presumably,  these  drugs  would 
have  been  the  States’  first  choice  were  they  in  fact  more
effective.  But  see  Denno,  The  Lethal  Injection  Quandry:
How  Medicine  Has  Dismantled  the  Death  Penalty,  76 
Ford. L. Rev. 49, 65–79 (2007) (describing the hurried and 
unreasoned  process  by  which  States  first  adopted  the
original  three-drug  protocol).  Courts’  review  of  execution 
methods  should  be  more,  not  less,  searching  when  States
are engaged in what is in effect human experimentation.

It  is  also  worth  noting  that  some  condemned  inmates
may read the Court’s surreal requirement that they iden­
tify  the  means  of  their  death  as  an  invitation  to  propose 
methods  of  executions  less  consistent  with  modern  sensi­
bilities.    Petitioners  here  failed  to  meet  the  Court’s  new