WASHINGTON (AFP) — A court in Texas, which accounts for the largest number of executions in the United States, put off the execution of a Honduran-born man set for Wednesday to answer questions about the lethal injection method, news reports said.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals late Tuesday delayed for at least 30 days the planned execution of convicted murderer Heliberto Chi, 28, to consider whether the lethal injection method it uses is "cruel and unusual" punishment in violation of the US Constitution, according to the Houston Chronicle.
It was the second reprieve in a week in Texas, suggesting that the state, which put 23 inmates to death last year -- out of 54 executed nationwide -- was stepping back while the US Supreme Court weighs the constitutionality of lethal injection.
Last week the nation's highest court agreed to consider whether the lethal cocktails used to kill most prisoners are constitutional, leaving the future of pending death sentences unclear.
Amid controversy over how the injections are given -- they can cause an agonizing death if done incorrectly -- the court agreed to examine the cases of two men condemned to death in the southern state of Kentucky.
Anti-death penalty campaigners had demanded that executions across the nation, where more than 3,000 people are on death row, be suspended pending the court decision, expected by next summer.
In the Texas case, the criminal appeals court gave Chi a reprieve and asked the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to answer within one month whether lethal injection fell under the constitution's definition of cruel and unusual punishment.
In a lethal injection execution, three drugs are administered to the condemned: one to sedate him, one to paralyze him, and one to stop the heart.
However, there is no national protocol for administering the drugs and it is not always done by a medical professional. Several studies and botched executions have shown that death may be prolonged and painful.
So far this year, 40 of the 41 people executed in the United States have been killed by lethal injection, with one choosing the electric chair. Most of the executions have taken place in Texas, which has put to death more than 400 people since the reinstatement of the death penalty in the country in 1976.
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