Indiana inmate executed by lethal injection
on Jan 26, 2006 at 7:12 pm
MORNING UPDATE: News organizations reported that Indiana carried out the execution of Marvin Bieghler after about a 30-minute delay awaiting word from the Supreme Court on the state’s request to allow the execution.. He reportedly was pronounced dead at 2:17 a.m.
LATEST UPDATE: 00:45 a.m. Overturning the Seventh Circuit Court, the Supreme Court voted 6-3 early Friday to permit the state of Indiana to carry out the execution of Marvin Bieghler by lethal injection. The Court granted the request of the Indiana state attorney general to vacate the order delaying the execution, an order the Seventh Circuit had issued late Thursday. Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens noted they would have denied the state’s motion. The application was Donahue v. Bieghler, docketed as 05-A-684.
UPDATE 11:00 p.m.:After the Seventh Circuit Court, dividing 2-1, ordered a delay of the execution, the state of Indiana asked the Supreme Court to lift that stay. The request was still being considered as midnight approached. The Seventh Circuit acted after the Supreme Court denial, discussed below.
The Supreme Court on Thursday evening cleared the way for Indiana to carry out after midnight the execution of Marvin Bieghler, refusing to hear his challenge to the process of lethal injection that the state uses to carry out a death sentence. The Court both refused to postpone the execution, and denied review of Bieghler’s appeal raising that “cruel and unusual punishment” issue. Two Justices would have ordered delay of the execution.
The Court’s action came one day after the Justices had agreed, in a Florida case, to spell out the procedures that death row inmates may use in challenging execution by lethal injection. In the Indiana case, the defense lawyer had asked the Court to order a delay in the scheduled execution until after it had decided the Florida case, an appeal by inmate Clarence Edward Hall (docket 05-8794).
Unlike Hill’s case, Bieghler’s appeal was a direct challenge to the constitutionality of lethal injection. Indiana uses a protocol of three drugs to anesthetize the individual, stop his breathing, and stop his heart. Bieghler was challenging the anesthetic, claiming — based in part on a study published in April in the British medical journal Lancet — that the anesthetic does not spare the individual from “unnecessary pain and agony.”
Earlier Thursday, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels turned down a clemency request.
The Supreme Court denied the petition in Bieghler v. Indiana (docket 05-8824) and the stay application (05-A-679). Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted that they would grant the stay
Bieghler, a drug dealer, had been put out of business when someone tipped police about his activities.. He had said that if he discovered who the informant was, he would kill that individual . He later expressed the belief that a man named Tommy Miller of Russiaville had given the tip to police. On Decembeer 11, 1981, Miller and his pregnant wife were found dead in their trailer home in the small town west of Kokomo.
Among a series of appeals, Bieghler had asked the Supreme Court last April to review his conviction and death sentence. The Court denied review on Oct. 11 (05-5199), in Bieghler v. McBride. The Indiana Supreme Court last Dec. 28 refused to allow him to file a new challenge, including his claim about the lethal injection method.
