Alabama: Where the capital punishment debate is how to kill people

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=5238037">Supreme Court: Inmate Can Challenge Execution Procedure
Monday, May 24, 2004
Reuters
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WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday that an Alabama death row inmate can make a last-minute challenge under a federal civil rights law to the procedures that may be used to carry out his execution by lethal injection.
On Oct. 6, 2003, three days before his scheduled execution, David Nelson filed the civil rights lawsuit. He claimed his veins have been damaged by years of drug use and challenged as unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment the proposed "cut down" procedure that may be used to access his veins.
If access to suitable vein cannot be achieved, prison authorities proposed to have a doctor perform the procedure involving use of a local anesthetic and a two-inch incision to insert the intravenous line that carries the lethal drugs.
A federal judge and a U.S. appeals court ruled that Nelson could not bring the claim.
The appeals court said Nelson, who was convicted of killing two men in 1977 and sentenced to death for one of the murders, already had brought an unsuccessful appeal under habeas corpus and a 1996 federal law limits a second or successive appeal.
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Read the rest here.

It's popular in our 51st state!

No need to find a vein for it to do the job.

I thought that under Alabama law, the inmate could request electrocution (Yellow Mama). Maybe not, if he was convicted after a certain date. (It's called "yellow" from the paint job.)