Friday, July 2, 2010

Some lethal injection challenges get OK

Associated Press - July 1, 2010

TALLAHASSEE — A sharply divided Florida Supreme Court has agreed to let state lawyers for death row inmates challenge lethal injection in federal courts.

The 4-3 ruling Thursday reversed a prior high court ruling that prohibited what are known as capital collateral regional counsels from filing federal civil rights suits to contest the constitutionality of Florida’s execution method.

In the same opinion, though, the justices unanimously rejected Dolan Darling’s constitutional attack on lethal injection and upheld his death sentence.

Darling, an escapee from a Bahamian jail, was convicted of raping and fatally shooting Grazyna Mlynarczyk, an illegal immigrant from Poland, at her Orlando apartment in 1996.

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