Once Again, Justice Thomas Has Been "The Decider" -- To Put A Florida Man To Death, In A Manner That Will Very Likely Cause Extreme Pain, Due To Drug Interactions...

Once again, it is Justice Thomas' order that removes the last barrier to this arguably cruel form of execution (for at least this man with porphyria). The order is. . . now on the docket. [Many may recall that we previously discussed a similar (failed) challenge, to the execution of an Alabama man -- about a year and a half ago. It was Thomas that finally put that Alabama man to death, as well.]

Damn.

To be certain, I've long understood the "Code of Hammurabi-style theater" -- at play here.

It just strikes me as quite a distance beneath. . . a society of ordered liberty.

Here is the Florida man's description (by his counsel) of the Eighth Amendment violation that Thomas is now only to happy to countenance:

. . .[The Florida-Condemned Mr.] Rogers is arguing that Florida’s current lethal injection procedures are unconstitutional as specifically applied to him because executing Rogers under those procedures will very likely cause him needless pain and suffering due to the interaction of Florida’s use of the drug etomidate and Rogers’s Porphyria. Glossip v. Gross, 576 U.S. 863 (2015); Baze v. Rees, 553 U.S. 35 (2008).

Rogers’s as-applied challenge to Florida’s lethal injection procedures is substantial grounds upon which relief from the ultimate sanction of execution very likely could be granted. The state circuit court summarily denied Rogers’ as-applied challenge without holding an evidentiary hearing on the matter. However, the Florida Supreme Court’s (“FSC”) prior precedent recognizes the need for evidentiary hearings on as-applied challenges to execution procedures, and the FSC has relinquished jurisdiction to the lower state court on at least four separate occasions so that an evidentiary hearing may be held on such claims. Rogers should be given the same opportunity to an evidentiary hearing as those prior defendants who also raised an as-applied challenge while under an active death warrant. . . .

[Editor's Note: about a decade ago, Pfizer stopped selling lethal injection drugs. Now prisons must make their own cocktails of death.]

So, we yet again renew our opposition to the death penalty in all cases -- and particularly here, where animal models (mice and rats) suggest that the inmate will struggle violently for several minutes, rather than falling immediately into paralysis and coma, in his case, this would be likely due to poisons gushing forth from his liver, as his porphyria disease interacts with the injected etomidate -- and it in turn interacts with the therapeutic drugs he's taking. This could take 20 to 30 minutes before he shuts down completely, struggling the whole while. But that may well be the unstated but cruel intention of Florida -- and earlier in 2024, Alabama.]

All this leads to, in Hammurabi's Code -- is a land of the. . . blind -- "as eyes -- for eyes. . . do not restore sight to the dead". Out.

नमस्ते