Court Opinion

ID: 9572012
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:37:22.409688+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:31:20.995238
License: Public Domain

CLAY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The majority concludes that Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol is “substantially similar” to the Kentucky protocol deemed constitutional in Baze v. Rees, — U.S. -, 128 S.Ct. 1520, 170 L.Ed.2d 420 (2008), and that the district court erred in granting judgment in favor of Harbison. At first glance, the majority opinion is straightforward: the majority marches *540through the standard set forth in Baze, contrasts the Baze plurality’s findings with the district court’s findings, and holds that Harbison failed to satisfy the Baze standard. At closer inspection, however, it becomes obvious that this approach is flawed, both legally and analytically. Because the district court issued its opinion before the Baze decision, the district court never had the opportunity to receive and consider evidence in light of the Baze standard, and it never rendered a judgment as to whether Tennessee’s protocol complied with Baze. By failing to provide the district court with an opportunity to consider Tennessee’s protocol in light of Baze, the majority effectively usurps the district court’s role as a factfinder and decides an issue never presented to the district court: whether there are material differences between Kentucky’s and Tennessee’s lethal injection protocols. As a court of appeals, we are obligated to provide the district court with the first opportunity to receive evidence and rule on this question. Because I would remand this case for an evidentiary hearing in light of Baze, I respectfully dissent.
The majority recasts the district court’s evidentiary findings in light of criteria that the court never considered, presuming findings under Baze that the district court never made. It does so in a cursory manner, with minimal attention to the Baze plurality’s fact-specific analysis, summarily concluding at each juncture that any deficiencies in Tennessee’s execution protocol had already been considered but rejected in Baze.
This analysis is unsustainable inasmuch as it undercuts the factual findings of both the district court and the Baze plurality. For example, the majority concludes that the failure to check for an inmate’s consciousness under the Tennessee protocol is not problematic because the Baze Court “concluded that a visual inspection of the inmate by the warden was sufficient to protect the inmate’s Eighth Amendment rights.” Slip op. at 538 (citing Baze, 128 S.Ct. at 1536-37). In Baze, however, the plurality reached that conclusion only after it credited the testimony of medical experts who stated that the signs of IV problems, including infiltration, would be “ ‘very obvious,’ even to the average person, because of the swelling that would result.” 128 S.Ct. at 1534. The majority engages in no discussion of how the district court in this case made the opposite factual findings.1 This is but one example of how the majority’s misguided attempts to recast the district court’s inquiry fail.
It is not unforeseeable that a three-drug protocol that is, at first glance, similar to Kentucky’s protocol, could fail to meet the standard set forth in Baze. That determination would turn in large part, not on the state’s written protocol, but rather on the way the protocol is implemented. As Justice Stevens explained in his concurring opinion in Baze, the “debate about lethal injection as a method of execution” remains open, and “[t]he question whether a similar three-drug protocol may be used in other States ... may well be answered differently in a future case on the basis of a more complete record.” Id. at 1542-43.
This Court has a “heightened responsibility ... to insist, even at the risk of delay, on having the fact-finding process *541carried out properly at the level intended rather than to assume, even indirectly, a fact-finding role.” Lewis v. Bloomsburg Mills, Inc., 773 F.2d 561, 577 (4th Cir.1985). This admonition is particularly appropriate in the instant ease, where the district court is uniquely equipped to conduct fact-finding to determine whether Tennessee’s execution protocol is “substantially similar” to Kentucky’s protocol. See Baze, 128 S.Ct. at 1537. Moreover, because of the extensive testimony that has already been heard in this case, the district court is well-positioned to consider the record before it, to supplement the record, and to apply the facts of the case to the new standard enunciated in Baze.
Only after the district court’s fact-finding is complete can the district court make a determination as to whether Tennessee’s protocol can be carried out in accordance with the requirements set forth in Baze. And only then, if an appeal is pursued, would this Court be in a position to evaluate the district court’s judgment. By circumventing this process, the majority oversteps its role, and its instructions vacating the district court’s opinion and injunction are unwarranted. Instead, this Court should remand for an evidentiary hearing in light of Baze and provide the district court with the first opportunity to rule on whether Harbison can meet the Baze standard. I therefore respectfully dissent.

. In the instant case, while the warden is also in the execution chamber, Tennessee's protocol does not require the warden to observe the lines, the site, or the inmate, (Joint Appendix ("J.A.”) at 75-76), and the district court found that the warden had no training or experience that would allow him to do so effectively. (J.A. at 288.) Moreover, medical experts testified that under the Tennessee protocol, the IV is inserted in an area in which swelling associated with infiltration would not be apparent.