The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments today on whether a drug used in Oklahoma's lethal-injection executions violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment, Christian Science Monitor's Warren Richey reports. At issue is whether midazolam, the first drug used in a three-drug cocktail, is "reliably effective in preventing condemned prisoners from suffering an intolerable level of pain during the execution process." The drug is supposed to make prisoners unconscious, but there have been three botched executions in which prisoners awoke and struggled during the administration of the later drugs.
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