SCOTUS Rejects Challenge To DOJ Death Penalty Plan

The Washington Post reports:

The Supreme Court will not take up a challenge to new federal death penalty protocols proposed by the Justice Department, which wants to resume executions as early as July for the first time since 2003.

The court, without comment, declined Monday to take up the lawsuit filed by four death row inmates. As is customary, it gave no reason. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor said they would have accepted the case.

Attorney General William P. Barr in the past summer said the department planned to resume executions using a new lethal-injection procedure that involves a single drug, pentobarbital. The Justice Department has laid out plans for three executions in July and a fourth in August.

NEWS: #SCOTUS will not hear the appeal of fed'l death row inmates on the question of whether federal executions need to use the same protocol as the state in question, nor will the court halt the federal executions in order to consider that claim. pic.twitter.com/JP1bGWdO3J

— Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner) June 29, 2020