More Baze v. Rees Analysis

More relevant analysis on Baze v. Rees in both Indiana-specific and national perspectives.

Indiana Lawyer:

What may remain open is how states assess what alternative options are available and how states administer the drugs during a lethal injection. That's where Indiana has more than a passing interest in the lethal injection issue, one that's been raised frequently by Hoosier death-row inmates - including three in the past year who are now all dead.

Those inmates had filed federal suits challenging the state's lethal injection method, making similar claims as in Baze, but those suits never gained steam in District Court and are now moot: David Leon Woods and Michael Lambert were executed by lethal injection last year, while inmate Norman Timberlake died from natural causes in his prison cell in November 2007 while still on death row.

A very thorough examination of what the opinions mean and what is yet to come from Adam Liptak at the N.Y. Times:

Executions in Texas, Alabama and other Southern states with high death-penalty rates are likely to resume shortly in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision Wednesday upholding Kentucky’s method of putting condemned inmates to death.

But the fractured decision may actually slow executions elsewhere in the country, legal experts said, as lawyers for death-row inmates launch fresh challenges based on its newly announced legal standards.

“The decision will have the effect of widening the divide between executing states and symbolic states — states that have the death penalty on the books but rarely carry out executions,” said Jordan M. Steiker, a law professor at the University of Texas.

Also, Mr. Liptak discusses the background of the case here (mp3).