US:DEATH CHAMBERS are set to reopen at prisons across the United States after the Supreme Court ruled that the lethal injection used for most executions does not violate a constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Executions have been on hold for seven months pending the court's ruling on a challenge to Kentucky's lethal injection method, which is similar to that used in most of the 36 states that impose the death penalty.
The challenge, which was brought by two death row prisoners, argued that the three-drug cocktail used in executions risks exposing condemned prisoners to excruciating pain. All states use the same three drugs for the lethal injection - sodium thiopental, to sedate the prisoner; pancuronium bromide, to induce paralysis; and potassium chloride, to induce cardiac arrest.
Medical researchers have warned that too low a dose of the first drug could leave prisoners conscious but paralysed, as the final chemical - normally used to salt icy roads - is pumped through their veins, causing excruciating pain.
Chief justice John Roberts, writing the leading opinion for the court, said the inmates failed to show that the method poses an unconstitutional risk of pain. "Kentucky has put in place several important safeguards to ensure that an adequate dose of sodium thiopental is delivered to the condemned prisoner," he wrote.
"Simply because an execution method may result in pain, either by accident or as an inescapable consequence of death, does not establish the sort of objectively intolerable risk of harm that qualifies as cruel and unusual."
Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia wrote separately to say they believe a method of execution would violate the ban on cruel and unusual punishment only if it were deliberately designed to inflict pain.
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter dissented, arguing that Kentucky lacked adequate safeguards.
"Rare though errors may be, the consequences of a mistake about the condemned inmate's consciousness are horrendous and effectively undetectable," Ms Ginsburg wrote.
Within two hours of the ruling, Virginia's governor Tim Kaine said the state would resume executions and other states are expected to follow suit within days. More than 3,300 people are on death row across the US.