TERRE HAUTE, Indiana--A U.S. federal judge issued an injunction on Monday delaying what would have been the first federal execution in 17 years, scheduled for later in the day, thwarting at least for now the Trump administration's goal of reviving capital punishment at the federal level.
Judge Tanya Chutkan of the U.S. district court in Washington ordered the U.S. Department of Justice to delay four executions scheduled for July and August to allow continuation of the condemned men's legal challenges against a new lethal injection protocol announced in 2019.
"The scientific evidence before the court overwhelmingly indicates that the 2019 Protocol is very likely to cause Plaintiffs extreme pain and needless suffering during their executions," Chutkan wrote in her order.
She said the inmates were likely to succeed in their claim that the new one-drug protocol using pentobarbital, a powerful barbiturate, breached a constitutional ban on "cruel and unusual" punishments. Chutkan sided with a medical expert cited by the inmates who said that a high-dose injection of pentobarbital was caustic enough to rapidly fill a condemned man's lungs with bloody fluid, causing him to feel as if he were drowning for some time before losing consciousness.
To make their deaths less painful, the inmates have proposed that the Justice Department add morphine or a similar painkiller to the lethal injection protocol, or arrange for them to be executed by firing squad, a method last used a decade ago by Utah's government.
The Trump administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Chutkan's order, writing in its application that it was a "meritless injunction" that would "scramble" its plans to "administer a dignified and humane lethal injection."
The Justice Department also challenged the injunction in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, saying in a court filing its extensive planning for the July and August dates, including training drills for the 40-member execution team and the booking of transportation and hotel rooms, "cannot easily be undone."
