USA - Tennessee. Tennessee Wins Ruling on Execution

Tennessee Wins Ruling on Execution. The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, overturned a lower court's finding that Tennessee's lethal injection procedure is unconstitutional. The case concerns Edward Jerome Harbison, 54, who was sentenced to death in 1985 for the murder of Edith Russell in 1983. On Sept. 19, 2007(see), as a result of Mr. Harbison's appeals, the Federal District Court in Nashville found that Tennessee's procedures for execution were unconstitutional, in part because of the potential that the process would cause unnecessary pain to the condemned. After that decision, however, the Supreme Court issued an opinion that largely supported lethal injection. The opinion, written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., was one of several in a fractured decision and approved Kentucky's process, which uses a sequence of 3 drugs. The opinion said a state with procedures "substantially similar to the protocol we uphold today" would pass muster. Today’s 2-1 decision said that the procedures in Tennessee, which uses the same 3 drugs, were substantially similar to those in Kentucky and that the lower court's bar on executing Mr. Harbison should be lifted.