Last night’s eleventh-hour reprieve for condemned murderer William Patrick Castillo in Nevada has raised the stakes in a review of the death penalty that will occur before the U.S. Supreme Court in coming months, the Washington Post reports. The high court is scheduled to hear oral arguments on the subject and death penalty opponents plan to argue that the three-chemical cocktail used by most of the 37 states — including Nevada — violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban against cruel and unusual punishment.
State corrections officials assert that challenges to the method are often attempts by death penalty opponents to end capital punishment, the Post says. But condemned inmates are “alive all the way through the process, feeling pain until the bitter end,” Lisa McCalmont, a lawyer and consultant to the University of California at Berkeley’s law school.
Link: http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=Nevada+reprieve