Stay of execution could reach beyond Texas

HOUSTON - The U.S. Supreme Court's decision to give a Texas death-row inmate a last-minute reprieve shortly after it agreed to consider the legality of lethal injections could mean a hiatus for the nation's busiest death chamber.

The court spared Carlton Turner Jr. late Thursday after his lawyers raised arguments mirroring a Kentucky case, in which two condemned inmates contended lethal injection was unconstitutionally cruel.

"I think we're headed toward a moratorium, at least until the Supreme Court resolves the Kentucky case," University of Texas law professor Jordan Steiker said. "I think now the course seems relatively clear that we are likely to have a moratorium on executions . . . until the court issues an opinion and provides definitive guidance."

Krista Moody, a spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Perry, said yesterday that the governor still views executions as acceptable under Texas law. But she referred legal questions about the reprieve's role on executions to the state Attorney General's Office, which had no immediate comment. "This is a case for the courts," Moody said.

The Texas execution procedure is virtually the same as the one in Kentucky. Three drugs are used - a sedative, a muscle-paralyzing drug, and a drug that induces cardiac arrest. According to the appeal filed for Turner, if the first of the three drugs failed to knock him unconscious, he would experience "excruciating pain and torture as the second and third drugs are administered."

Turner, 28, condemned for killing his parents, would have been the 27th prisoner executed this year and the 406th since the state resumed carrying out capital punishment in 1982. Both numbers far exceed those of any other state.

The Supreme Court decision to consider the Kentucky challenges has prompted other states to move cautiously. Alabama officials halted an execution Thursday because new injection procedures had not yet been put into place in that state. And death-penalty lawyers in Virginia and North Carolina are calling for delays.

David Dow, a University of Houston law professor on Turner's legal team, said it was "way too early" to to say a moratorium was coming.

He said the real test could come next week, when Heliberto Chi is set for injection for a slaying during a robbery.