Mark Joseph Stern outlines how the Daniel Lee execution case reached the Supreme Court, which promptly demonstrated that it, too, is a charter member of the death cult that is the Republican Party.
Just after 2 a.m., however, the Supreme Court’s five conservatives reversed the D.C. Circuit, threw out Chutkan’s stay, and cleared the way for Lee’s execution. Their curt decision dismissed out of hand the prisoners’ assertion that pentobarbital would inflict needless pain. The government, they noted, “has produced competing expert testimony of its own, indicating that any pulmonary edema occurs only after the prisoner has died or been rendered fully insensate.” And apparently, the mere existence of “competing” testimony made the execution method sufficiently humane. The Supreme Court typically considers a number of factors when deciding whether to uphold a lower court’s stay, including irreparable harm and the interest of the public. Yet SCOTUS completely ignored these factors in its dash to authorize the executions.
Emphasis mine.