De Facto Moratorium Intact

Just one hour and fifteen minutes before Alabama inmate James Callahan was scheduled to be executed, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay:

Callahan's execution would have been the first in Alabama and just the second in the United States since the U.S. Supreme Court announced in September that it would hear a Kentucky case challenging the constitutionality of lethal injection...

Alabama had tried twice before to become the first state to resume executions, but both of those executions also were stopped by the courts.

This continues the de facto moratorium that the U.S. Supreme Court has set in place pending it's decision on Baze v. Rees (see earlier post on this topic).