In a biting dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said, “Under the court’s new rule, it would not matter whether the state intended to use midazolam, or instead to have petitioners drawn and quartered, slowly tortured to death, or actually burned at the stake.
Alito responded, saying “the dissent’s resort to this outlandish rhetoric reveals the weakness of its legal arguments.”
In a separate dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer said the time has come for the court to debate whether the death penalty itself is constitutional. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined Breyer’s opinion. They stopped short of declaring their outright opposition to capital punishment.
“I believe it highly likely that the death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment,” Breyer said, drawing on cases he has reviewed in more than 20 years on the Supreme Court bench.
More than 100 death row-inmates have been exonerated, showing that the death penalty is unreliable, Breyer said. He said it also is imposed arbitrarily, takes far too long to carry out and has been abandoned by most of the country. Last year, just seven states carried out executions, he said.
Article Appeared @http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2015/06/29/us-supreme-court-upholds-use-of-controversial-execution-drug.html