Earl Berry had eaten his final meal and was just 19 minutes away from his appointment with the executioner on Mississippi's death row when the news arrived that the Supreme Court in Washington had granted him a stay of execution.
His lawyers had made a last-ditch appeal arguingdeath by lethal injection, the method of choice in almost every United States state that upholds capital punishment, constitutes cruel and unusual punishment and is thus barred by the constitution.
The argument has become widespread ever since a judge imposed a de facto moratorium on executions in California 20 months ago for precisely that reason. The Supreme Court agreed in September to take up the lethal injection question based on a case coming out of Kentucky. Since then it has stayed three executions.
Legal scholars now agree that no execution is likely to take place anywhere in the US until the Kentucky case is settled. The Supreme Court will hear arguments in that case in January and is expected to rule in the northern spring.
Lethal injection was introduced because it was supposed to be more humane than the electric chair. But the cocktail of drugs was not concocted by a doctor or chemical expert but by a prison board in Oklahoma. Recent medical evidence has suggested that the second drug, a paralysing agent called pancuronium bromide, may only mask the pain of execution. If the sodium pentothal administered first as a painkiller is not effective, then the prisoner can die in horrible agony without any witnesses being aware.
That argument first won over the courts in California, which has since ordered its prison service to redesign its regime. However, the redesign hit a setback when a judge near San Francisco said it needed to be subjected to public review, meaning an execution in California is not likely for months.
