Opinion ID: 852914
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Death by Lethal Injection as Cruel and Unusual Punishment

Text: Indiana now administers the death penalty by lethal injection. Ritchie contends that this method of execution inflicts unnecessary pain and therefore constitutes cruel and unusual punishment for purposes of the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution. We recently rejected this claim in Moore v. State, 771 N.E.2d 46 (Ind.2002). In Moore, the defendant contended that lethal injection was cruel and unusual as applied to him because of his obesity and the resulting inability to locate a suitable vein. Id. at 55 n. 3. We noted that Moore raised possible difficulties with the lethal injection process without substantiating the probability that any would occur in Moore's case. Id. We held that Moore had not established that lethal injection constituted cruel and unusual punishment in that case. Id. at 56. In holding that injection as applied in Moore did not violate the Eighth Amendment, we necessarily held that injection is not per se cruel and unusual. In Moore, we observed that the Eighth Amendment requires that an execution be performed in a manner that avoids unnecessary or wanton infliction of pain, but concluded that lethal injection does not constitute wanton infliction of pain. Id. at 55. Because Ritchie points to no circumstances creating an unusual risk in his case, his contention amounts to a request to reverse that holding. Ritchie cites two instances where lethal injection did inflict excessive pain. In the first of these, the defendant's veins were abnormally small and a physician was required to perform a cut down to locate a proper vein. The execution required one hour and seventeen minutes, and sixteen minutes were spent locating a vein before a physician's incision exposed one. The defendant was conscious the entire time. The second instance involved an execution that took one hour to complete, again because of difficulty in inserting the needle into the vein. In that case the problem was attributed to the defendant's size. These two isolated cases do not establish that lethal injection is an inherently cruel or unusual method. To be sure, these two examples demonstrate that problems may occur in unusual circumstances, but that possibility does not rise to a systematic or inherent flaw in the lethal injection process. See Hill v. Lockhart, 791 F.Supp. 1388, 1394 (E.D.Ark. 1992). Recent decisions of the United States Supreme Court confirm this view. The reach of the Eighth Amendment is an issue of federal law. The Supreme Court recently held that a challenge to the cut down procedure may be brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Nelson v. Campbell, ___ U.S.___, 124 S.Ct. 2117, 158 L.Ed.2d 924 (2004). That case involves a defendant who has collapsed veins requiring a potentially painful surgical procedure to perform an injection. Two recent applications for stays of execution, Zimmerman v. Johnson, ___ U.S. ___, 124 S.Ct. 979, 157 L.Ed.2d 792 (2003), and Vickers v. Dretke, ___ U.S.___, 124 S.Ct. 956, 157 L.Ed.2d 768 (2003), involved more general challenges to the lethal injection process. Zimmerman was originally granted a stay of execution by the United States Supreme Court, but the stay was lifted on December 15, 2003, and Vickers's application for stay was denied by the Court on December 9, 2003. Both have been executed. Ritchie's claim, like those in Vickers and Zimmerman, involves only a general claim that the lethal injection process violates the Eighth Amendment. Thus, the Supreme Court has very recently denied review of these general challenges to lethal injection in proceedings where execution was imminent. We conclude that the Court sees no merit in the contention that lethal injection is a per se violation of the Eighth Amendment.