U.S. Supreme Court’s Execution Stay Results in Nationwide Stoppage of Executions

November 7, 2007, JEFFERSON CITY, MO –  On Tuesday, October 30, 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay of execution for Earl W. Berry, an inmate on Mississippi’s death row. At issue is whether lethal injection through a specific combination of drugs that bring about death causes severe enough pain to be deemed cruel and unusual punishment, which violates the Eighth Amendment. The stay issued by the Supreme Court indicates that the court will block all executions until it decides a lethal injection case from Kentucky that challenges the method of lethal injection used in three dozen states including Missouri.

Missouri courts faced a similar case in 2005 when inmate Michael A. Taylor filed a suit arguing that lethal injection could cause unconstitutionally cruel pain. Taylor's suit revealed that the director of the Missouri Department of Corrections was not fully aware of the procedure and did not know that the physician in charge had decided on his own to reduce the amount of sedative given to condemned inmates. In an investigation by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, it was also revealed that the physician had been reprimanded by the state Board of Healing Arts, had been denied privileges at two hospitals and confused numbers due to dyslexia.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch investigation, which revealed the identity of the physician in charge of state executions, resulted in legislation passed in 2007 that makes it a crime to reveal the identity of members of the state execution team and that significantly reduces public oversight of the execution process.

The Taylor lawsuit resulted in a halt of executions in Missouri. A ruling by the federal appeals court in June 2007 allowed for executions to resume in Missouri. There are currently 46 inmates on Missouri’s death row including Michael Taylor. Their fate now is tied to the U.S. Supreme Court’s review of the Kentucky case which will be argued in January 2008. A ruling is not expected until the summer of 2008.

“We are pleased that the U.S. Supreme Court is looking at the issue of lethal injection and whether it violates the U.S. Constitution prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment,” said Rita Linhardt, Research Director of the Missouri Catholic Conference. “However, the Catholic Church remains firm in it’s belief that the death penalty is no longer necessary in modern society and should be abolished.”

Linhardt pointed out that Missouri’s bishops issued a pastoral letter on March 30, 2006 reflecting on Catholic teaching and the death penalty, noting that Jesus was unjustly sentenced to death and that more violence is not a solution to society's problems. The bishops also stated that a sentence of death offers an illusion of closure and vindication, ''but no act, even an execution, can bring back a loved one or heal the terrible wounds. The pain and loss of one death cannot be wiped away by another death."

Missouri has executed 66 people in the last 18 years. During same time period, the courts have set aside over one-third of the death sentences handed down in Missouri because of serious errors. This includes the sentences of three individuals in Missouri who courts found were wrongly convicted.