Alabama is scheduled to execute Christopher Lee Price this week for his part in a 1991 sword-and-dagger slaying of a pastor in Fayette County.

Thursday’s execution has been at the center of unusually public squabbling at the Supreme Court over capital punishment.A federal judge stayed Price’s execution in April after he raised challenges to the state’s lethal injection procedure.

The Supreme Court fractured 5-4 along liberal-conservative lines to overrule those orders and allow his execution to go forward, but not before the midnight death warrant expired.

Justice Stephen Breyer admonished court conservatives for overruling two lower court stays “in the middle of the night.”

Justice Clarence Thomas later wrote a 14-page response saying there was “nothing of substance” to Breyer’s claims.
(Associated Press, copyright 2018)

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