Baze v. Rees

The petitioners, convicted of double homicide and sentenced to death in Kentucky, challenged the state's three-drug lethal-injection protocol, which first renders the prisoner unconscious, then prevents involuntary muscle movement and stops respiration, and finally induces cardiac arrest. They argued the protocol risked being administered incorrectly, causing significant undetected pain, and proposed an alternative one-drug protocol that no other state had adopted. The lower court found Kentucky's protocol did not violate the Eighth Amendment, and the case reached the Supreme Court.