On their last day together until the fall, the justices voted 5-4 Monday in a case from Oklahoma that the sedative midazolam can be used in executions without violating the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.
The court also divided 5-4 in a case upholding independent commissions that draw congressional districts in Arizona, California and 11 other states in a bid to reduce partisanship in electoral map making. By a similar margin, the court called into question first ever limits on emissions of mercury and other toxic pollutants from power plants, in a ruling that said the federal Environmental Protection Agency failed to account for the cost of the regulations at the outset. In addition, the justices agreed to hear an important case from Texas about the use of race in college admissions for its term that begins in October.
The lethal-injection drug midazolam was used in Arizona, Ohio and Oklahoma executions in 2014. The dispute over its use centred on the fact that the executions took longer than usual and raised concerns that the drug did not perform its intended task of putting inmates into a coma-like sleep.
Justice Samuel Alito said for a conservative majority that arguments the drug could not be used effectively as a sedative in executions were speculative and he dismissed problems in executions in Arizona and Oklahoma as “having little probative value for present purposes.”