Supreme Court Troubled by Planned Use of Lethal Injection To Execute Prisoner With Rare Condition

At oral arguments in Bucklew v. Precythe on November 6, 2018, Supreme Court Justices appeared troubled that a lethal injection execution could cause “gruesome and brutal pain” for a Missouri prisoner.

The case concerns Missouri’s efforts to execute a prisoner named Russell Bucklew, who suffers from a rare medical condition which his lawyers argue would make his execution by lethal injection extremely painful.