Supreme Court justice halts Missouri execution

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has issued an order halting the planned execution of a Missouri inmate shortly before he was scheduled to die in what would have been the first execution since a botched lethal injection left a condemned man writhing in agony last month.

Alito's order issued late Tuesday does not explain why he suspended the scheduled execution of Russell Bucklew, but it indicates that he or the high court will have more to say about the matter.

The order was issued shortly after the full 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals lifted a stay of execution granted hours earlier by a three-judge panel of that court.

The panel had issued the stay over concerns that Bucklew's rare medical condition could cause him undue suffering during lethal injection.

Bucklew, 46, was scheduled to die by lethal injection at 12:01 a.m. (CDT) Wednesday for killing a southeast Missouri man during a violent crime spree in 1996. 

Attorneys for Bucklew had asked the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to halt the execution, citing concerns over the secrecy of Missouri’s purchasing of the execution drug pentobarbital and worries that Bucklew could suffer during lethal injection due to cavernous hemangioma, a rare medical condition that causes weakened and malformed blood vessels, as well as tumors in his nose and throat.

None of the six inmates executed since Missouri switched to pentobarbital last year have displayed outward signs of pain or suffering. 

But the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday cited concerns about Bucklew's medical condition, which raised the risk of "unnecessary pain and suffering by the inmate."

"Bucklew's unrebutted medical evidence demonstrates the requisite sufficient likelihood of unnecessary pain and suffering beyond the constitutionally permissible amount inherent in all executions," the court wrote.

Bucklew was convicted of the 1996 murder of Michael Sanders in southeast Missouri, and the kidnapping and rape of Stephanie Ray, an ex-girlfriend who had been seeing Sanders. U.S. District Court Judge Beth Phillips had on Monday denied the stay and a request to have his execution videotaped, ruling there was insufficient evidence to suggest Bucklew would suffer severe and needless pain. But the Eighth Circuit disagreed. 

Late last month, concerns about execution drugs developed when Oklahoma inmate Clayton Lockett's execution went awry. 

Officials said Lockett's vein collapsed and he died of an apparent heart attack 43 minutes after the start of the procedure. Oklahoma put on hold a second execution scheduled for the same night as Lockett's death while the state investigates what happened.

Wire services