Death row inmates ask Supreme Court to temporarily block federal executions

A group of federal death row inmates filed an emergency request to the Supreme Court on Thursday to halt a lower court order allowing their executions to move forward under a new lethal injection protocol.

The order from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is set to take effect Friday unless the Supreme Court temporarily puts it on hold by issuing a stay.

“Petitioners are likely to suffer irreparable harm absent a stay. Absent one, the government may execute petitioners according to an unlawful protocol — an ‘irremediable’ harm,” attorneys for the inmates wrote in the emergency request.

In Thursday’s filing directed to Chief Justice John Roberts, the inmates asked that the ruling from a divided three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit be paused to give the justices time to consider the appeal submitted by inmates last week.

In April, the D.C. Circuit panel ruled 2-1 in favor of a Trump administration plan to resume federal death sentences under a new lethal injection protocol.

Judges Neomi Rao and Gregory Katsas, both Trump appointees, said the new Justice Department policy on executions was allowed under federal law. Judge David Tatel, a Clinton appointee, dissented.

A federal execution has not been carried out since 2003, due in part to a widespread shortage during the Obama administration of lethal injection drugs in the so-called three-drug cocktail.

In an effort to resume capital punishment at the federal level, Attorney General William Barr announced in July that executions would occur through the use of a single drug, pentobarbital sodium.

At issue is whether the Trump administration’s drug protocol violates the Federal Death Penalty Act (FDPA), which says that the state where a capital crime was committed should determine the method of execution.

A federal trial court judge in November agreed to temporarily suspend the inmates’ executions. Judge Tanya Chutkan, an Obama appointee to the U.S. district court in D.C., ruled that the Trump administration likely exceeded its authority by creating a single uniform method of execution, rather than follow the state-by-state approach under the FDPA.

But the D.C. Circuit in April overruled the injunction, which prompted the inmates’ appeal to the Supreme Court.

The case is Roane v. Barr, No. 19-1348.

Updated at 12:02 p.m.