Glossip v. Gross

135 S.Ct. 2726 (2015)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

Ps filed a 42 U.S.C. §1983 action claiming that the use of midazolam violates the Eighth Amendment. All four men had been convicted of murder and sentenced to death by Oklahoma juries. They argue that midazolam, the first drug employed in the State’s current three-drug protocol, fails to render a person insensate to pain. The District Court then held that Ps failed to establish a likelihood of success on the merits of their claim that the use of midazolam violates the Eighth Amendment. It found that Ps failed to identify a known and available method of execution that presented a substantially less severe risk of pain than the method that the State proposed to use. Second, the court found that Ps failed to prove that Oklahoma’s protocol presents a risk that is sure or very likely to cause serious illness and needless suffering,’ amounting to an objectively intolerable risk of harm. It found that a 500-milligram dose of midazolam would make it a virtual certainty that any individual will be at a sufficient level of unconsciousness to resist the noxious stimuli which could occur from the application of the second and third drugs. The District Court denied the application for a preliminary injunction, finding that Ps had failed to prove that midazolam is ineffective. The Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed and accepted the District Court’s finding of fact regarding midazolam’s efficacy. The Supreme Court granted certiorari.