Oklahoma death row inmates lose their Eighth Amendment claims against state's lethal injection protocol

As reported in this AP article, a "federal judge in Oklahoma on Monday ruled the state’s three-drug lethal injection method is constitutional, paving the way for the state to request execution dates for more than two dozen death row inmates who were plaintiffs in the case."  Here is more from the press report:

Judge Stephen Friot’s ruling followed a six-day federal trial earlier this year in which attorneys for 28 death row inmates argued the first of the three drugs, the sedative midazolam, is not adequate to render an inmate unable to feel pain and creates a risk of severe pain and suffering that violates the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment.

“The prerequisites of a successful lethal injection challenge under the Eighth Amendment have been made clear by the Supreme Court,” Friot wrote, citing three earlier rulings on the death penalty. He continued: “The plaintiff inmates have fallen well short of clearing the bar set by the Supreme Court.”

Jennifer Moreno, one of the attorneys for the death row inmates, said they are still assessing their options for an appeal to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver. “The district court’s decision ignores the overwhelming evidence presented at trial that Oklahoma’s execution protocol, both as written and as implemented, creates an unacceptable risk that prisoners will experience severe pain and suffering,” Moreno said in a statement.

Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor said in a statement that the state effectively proved that both the lethal injection drugs and the state’s execution protocols are constitutional. “The Court’s ruling is definitive: The plaintiffs in this case ‘have fallen well short’ of making their case, and midazolam, as the State has repeatedly shown, ‘can be relied upon … to render the inmate insensate to pain,’” O’Connor said. “My team is reviewing the U.S. District Court’s order further and will make a decision regarding when to request execution dates from the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals.”...

The state has carried out four lethal injections since October that Oklahoma’s former Solicitor General Mithun Mansinghani said during closing arguments “are definitive proof that the protocol works as intended.” Oklahoma resumed lethal injections in October with the execution of John Grant, who convulsed on the gurney and vomited before being declared dead. Since then, three more executions were carried out without noticeable complications.

The 45-page ruling of the federal district court is available at this link.  This ruling serves as yet another example of the extra difficulties that death row prisoners have in prevailing on execution protocol challenges since the Supreme Court's April 2019 ruling in Bucklew v. Precythe,139 S. Ct. 1112 (2019).  And yet, no doubt in part because of the COVID pandemic, there have still been fewer annual average state executions in the three years since Bucklew than in any other period in the last forty years.