The Death Penalty: Is Lethal Injection "Cruel and Unusual Punishment"?

It's time for the Supreme Court to review the legality of the death penalty yet again.  This time, it has to do with whether using lethal injection violates the 8th Amendment.

Two Kentucky death row inmates filed suit back in 2004, stating that the chemical cocktail administered has the potential to cause "pain and suffering" and therefore could be considered "cruel and unusual punishment".  (I can't help but notice that neither inmate tried to state that he was innocent of the charges that had put him on death row in the first place.)  Even though a judge ruled in favor of the state, and Kentucky's highest court upheld that decision, it still goes before the U.S. Supreme court.

In 1992 Ralph Baze shot and killed a Powell County sheriff and deputy.  In 1990 Thomas Clyde Bowling Jr. gunned down the husband-and-wife owners of a dry cleaning store in Lexington, Kentucky, and then shot their two-year old son for good measure (the son survived).  Had it not been for their suit, both men would be dead today.

I'd like to see the Supreme Court call Steve Bennett and Arthur Briscoe in to testify.  They were Baze's victims.  I'd also like to see Edward and Tina Earley, Bowling's victims, get their day in court.  I'm sure they wouldn't mind sharing with the court how their 8th Amendment rights were violated when they were murdered, how they experienced pain and suffering, and amazingly, how they were punished for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Since the Supreme Court can't call in witnesses from the afterlife, maybe they could bring in Chris Earley, the son of Edward and Tina.  He might be able to convey the pain and suffering he's experienced being shot at age two, and having to go through life living without parents.  Maybe he can convince the highest court in the land that being punished for a crime does not mean that one should not have to suffer during the punishment.  (Or did these folks never get spanked as children?)

My personal opinion is that inmates on death row be executed in the same manner they killed their victims.  Shooting, drowing, suffocation, stabbing, mutilation, strangulation, torture, it doesn't matter.  I think that "an eye for an eye" would be more than just.  And maybe, just maybe, future criminals could be deterred by knowing that what goes around, comes around.

Unless the lawyers and the courts get in the way, of course.