Lawyers Can Still Save Client From Firing Squad

WASHINGTON - March 5, 2025 - PRLog -- Convicted murderer Brad Sigmon is scheduled to be put to death by a firing squad on Friday, March 7th,

But his lawyers could contest this method of execution by using a novel legal argument based upon a Supreme Court decision which provides a simple road map for such a challenge, says public interest law professor John Banzhaf,

THe trial court is likely to grant at least a brief stay because the legal argument is novel with no contradictory precedent, and because it is based squarely upon the clear language of the Supreme Court's Glossip ruling.

Sigmon chose to be executed by a firing squad rather than by lethal injection because he feared that the latter - with its history of excruciatingly painful mishaps - would be worse.

In Glossip v. Gross, the Supreme Court held that any method of imposing the death penalty can be challenged as unconstitutional simply by identifying a readily available alternative method that would significantly reduce the risk of severe pain.

The high court summed it up this way: to challenge a method of execution, a condemned prisoner need only establish "that the method [being challenged] creates a demonstrated risk of severe pain, and that the risk is substantial when compared to the known and available alternatives."

The simple alternative Banzhaf suggests, and an alternative to using firing squads or lethal injections is putting the condemned on the pill.

In at least ten states, physicians are permitted to prescribe barbiturate pills so that terminally ill patients can achieve death with dignity without any pain or other suffering.

Indeed, problems with administering lethal drugs orally, rather than by injection, are virtually non-existent since they are absorbed more slowly.

A judge is likely to, at the very least, grant a new stay motion - one which argues that administering pills meets all the Supreme Court's requirements for challenging other methods of execution - because this novel proposal has never been litigated before.

Any such ruling, based upon the U.S. Constitution, would seem to require all states, as well as the federal government, to abandon all other forms of execution, and end needless stays now based upon arguments about the relative merits and risks of various lethal injection protocols and other methods of execution, predicts Banzhaf.

As one publication recently put it:
By Killing Brad Sigmon by Firing Squad, South Carolina Will Revert to Our Uncivilized Roots (https://www.thestate.com/opinion/article300966504.html?ta...)

http://banzhaf.net/ jbanzhaf3ATgmail.com @profbanzhaf