Inmates Challenge Execution Method

With an execution scheduled for next week, 32 death row inmates are asking Tennessee’s high court to declare the state’s lethal injection method unconstitutional. Inmates’ attorney Kelley Henry said in arguments before the court Wednesday that “unassailable science” shows Tennessee’s latest three-drug cocktail will cause excruciating pain. Referencing the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment, she told the court that it should rule for the plaintiffs “if the 8th Amendment means anything.” But U.S. Supreme Court precedent requires the inmates to show a more humane alternative is available. Associate Solicitor General Jennifer Smith argued the inmates were unable to meet that requirement. Edmund Zagorski is scheduled to be executed Oct. 11. He was sentenced in 1984 in the slayings of two men during a drug deal.