The United States Supreme Court ruled on Thursday (6/23) that a prisoner sentenced to death could be executed by shooting.
Michael Nance, 61, who was sentenced to death in 2002, appeared in court to demand that he be shot. No execution date yet.
Nance was sentenced to death in the state of Georgia, where only lethal injection was used.
According to media reports on the incident, the convict argued that the fatal injection could cause extreme pain because his veins were in poor condition and “not suitable for intravenous access”.
He claimed that because he was on medication for chronic back pain, there was a higher risk that the anesthesia would not render him unconscious while performing it.
The Supreme Court, by a vote of four to five, granted Georgia’s motion contesting its protocol under federal civil rights law.
Image: GETTY IMAGES
The supreme court accepted the argument that death row prisoners had the right to be executed by any method applicable in any country other than the state in which they were sentenced. This paves the way for other death row inmates in the US to file similar lawsuits.
Nance was convicted of murdering a passerby after robbing a bank in 1993.
Fire squad is a valid method of execution only in four states: South Carolina, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Utah.
It is the primary method only in South Carolina, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Defendant JW “Boy” Ledford Jr., who was sentenced to death in Georgia in 2017, was asked to be executed, but his request was rejected in court. He took the lethal injection.
This method is most common in the 27 states where the death penalty is enforced. Fifteen of them, including Georgia, use lethal injection only.
‘This text was originally published at https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/internacional-61921533.‘
source: Noticias
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