U.S. Supreme Court allows death row inmate's lawsuit after failed execution

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday allowed a challenge by an Alabama death row inmate who sued months before surviving a botched execution claiming that the state's troubled lethal injection process would violate constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment. In an unusual case that has returned to the justices because the execution of convicted murderer Kenneth Smith failed, they turned away an appeal by Alabama officials of a lower court's decision to revive his lawsuit seeking to block the state from putting him to death through lethal injection.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday allowed a challenge by an Alabama death row inmate who sued months before surviving a botched execution claiming that the state's troubled lethal injection process would violate constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment.

In an unusual case that has returned to the justices because the execution of convicted murderer Kenneth Smith failed, they turned away an appeal by Alabama officials of a lower court's decision to revive his lawsuit seeking to block the state from putting him to death through lethal injection. Smith instead is seeking to be executed using another method. Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented from the decision.

A majority of the justices in November cleared the way for the execution of Smith, sentenced to death for his role in a 1988 murder-for-hire plot.