Gissendaner v. Commissioner, No. 15-14335 (11th Cir. 2015)
Annotate this CasePlaintiff filed suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983 seeking to prevent the State of Georgia from executing her, claiming that the execution will violate the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause of the Eighth Amendment for a number of reasons. The court agreed with the district court's order and opinion and attached a copy of it as part of the court's opinion. The court added a few comments: first, plaintiff's attorneys ignored the requirements of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8 and the district court would have been well within its discretion to strike the document; second, plaintiff's position that her Eighth Amendment rights have been or will be violated cannot be squared with Glossip v. Gross; third, the document plaintiff filed as a complaint does not allege the other element of an Eighth Amendment execution protocol claim, which is “an alternative that is feasible, readily implemented, and in fact significantly reduces a substantial risk of severe pain[,]" and finally, it is noteworthy that the lethal injection drug that Georgia uses in its single-drug protocol is pentobarbital, which, the Supreme Court has recognized, opponents to capital punishment have made largely unavailable through open channels.
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