Clarence E. Hill, a Florida death row inmate who won a Supreme Court decision in June allowing him to pursue a challenge to the protocol used to carry out executions by lethal injection, on Monday asked the Supreme Court to delay his scheduled execution so that he can get a chance to make that very challenge. His attorney argued in the stay application: “By arbitrarily setting an execution date while this case was awaiting remand, the State has attempted to manipulate the process and deny Mr. Hill his right to have this unconstitutional method of execution reviewed on the merits.” The attorneys accused the state of using tactics to prevent “any meaningful scrutiny” of its lethal injection procedure.
Hill’s application ((06-A-301) sought a stay of the scheduled execution Wednesday evening, until the SCt acts on a new petition for review (06-6545), in the case of Hill v. McDonough. In that petition, Hill’s lawyers are seeking to delay the execution so that his constitutional claim can go forward. The stay application can be found here. The petition for certiorari can be found here. The cert petition raises three somewhat complex questions; the second of these implies that the Circuit Court wrongly failed to issue the mandate in the case and only sent it back to the District Court after the Florida goveroer had re-set the execution date, “citing the lack of judicial activity.” The questions are articulated in the front of the linked petition.
The Eleventh Circuit Court on Friday refused to stay Hill’s execution; it did so without ruling on his challenge to Florida’s lethal injection protocol. It said that his lawyers had been engaging in delaying tactics, and that it would not allow itself to be drawn into a “protracted, and ultimately futile,” review of his case. It said it was “denying his request for an injunction based upon our independent analysis of the equities.”
The Circuit Court said that, in the Supreme Court’s June 12 decision sending Hill’s case back to lower courts, the Supreme Court had said that federal courts should protect states from “dilatory or speculative suits” seeking to delay the enforcement of criminal sentences.
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