## Facts

- Ralph Baze and Thomas C. Bowling, Kentucky death-row inmates, challenged Kentucky’s lethal-injection method under the Eighth Amendment.
- Kentucky used a three-drug protocol: sodium thiopental to induce unconsciousness, pancuronium bromide to cause paralysis, and potassium chloride to cause cardiac arrest.
- Petitioners alleged that if the first drug were improperly administered or an IV failed, a prisoner could remain conscious while experiencing severe pain from the later drugs, with the paralytic masking signs of suffering.
- Kentucky’s written procedures limited IV placement to qualified personnel with at least one year of professional experience.
- The protocol required the warden and deputy warden to observe the prisoner for IV problems while the drugs were administered from another room.
- The protocol required an additional dose of sodium thiopental at a secondary injection site if the prisoner was not unconscious within 60 seconds of delivery.
- After evidentiary hearings, the trial court found only a minimal risk of improper administration and upheld the protocol.
- The Kentucky Supreme Court affirmed, concluding the protocol did not create a substantial risk of wanton and unnecessary pain.

## Issues

1. Whether Kentucky’s three-drug lethal-injection protocol constitutes cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment.
2. What standard governs method-of-execution challenges, including what level of risk must be shown and whether a prisoner must identify a practical, less risky alternative.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court affirmed the judgment upholding Kentucky’s protocol (7–2), issuing no majority opinion.
- A plurality concluded the Eighth Amendment is violated only by an execution method that creates a substantial or objectively intolerable risk of serious harm.
- The plurality held that a state’s refusal to adopt an alternative procedure is unconstitutional only if the alternative is feasible, readily implemented, and would significantly reduce a substantial risk of severe pain.
- Applying that standard, the plurality treated petitioners’ asserted risks as remote and speculative on the record and found Kentucky’s safeguards sufficient to avoid a substantial risk of severe pain.
- Justices Ginsburg and Souter dissented, arguing the protocol lacked adequate safeguards to prevent severe, undetected pain if the prisoner were not properly anesthetized.

## Legal Principles

- The Eighth Amendment does not require eliminating all risk of pain in carrying out an execution; some risk of pain and procedural error is inevitable.
- A method of execution is unconstitutional only when it presents a substantial risk of serious harm, described as an objectively intolerable risk measured against contemporary standards of decency.
- A prisoner challenging a method of execution must show more than a speculative possibility of error; isolated mishaps or remote risks are insufficient.
- Comparative challenges require identifying an alternative method that is feasible and readily implemented and that would significantly reduce a substantial risk of severe pain.
- A state may not persist in an inferior protocol without legitimate justification when a clearly safer, practical alternative would materially reduce a substantial risk of severe pain.

## Conclusion

The Court upheld Kentucky’s three-drug lethal-injection protocol and, through a controlling plurality approach, set a demanding Eighth Amendment standard requiring proof of a substantial risk of severe pain and a practical alternative that significantly reduces that risk.


Baze v. Rees, 553 U.S. 35 (2008)