Death Penalty Moratorium

It’s all but official: the Supreme Court issued a stay of execution for a prisoner in Mississippi, “and thus gave a nearly indisputable indication that a majority intends to block all executions until the court decides a lethal injection case from Kentucky next spring.” Scalia and the man who put the doctrinaire conservative in “moderation” Sam Alito — but not Thomas or Roberts — dissented.

It seems almost certain, however, that this stay will be temporary and executions will resume after the case comes down next year. Although the possibility that we’re torturing people to death strikes me as more substantial Eighth Amendment grounds than the recent limitations on the death penalty found by the Supreme Court, preventing the execution of adolescents and the mentally handicapped represents a relatively small number of cases, lethal injection involves virtually every execution in the country. I can’t imagine Kennedy voting to require stringent standards of evidence from the states in this instance.