The Supreme Court hears arguments on Monday in a case about whether Kentucky’s use of a “cocktail” of injected poisons to carry out the death penalty is unconstitutional. We believe that the death penalty, no matter how it is administered, is unconstitutional and wrong. If a state does execute anyone, it must do so in a way that is humane and does not impose needless suffering. Kentucky’s method does not meet that standard.

Popular support for capital punishment is, thankfully, declining in this country. The growing number of exonerations of innocent people on death row has shown that the system cannot be trusted to make such an irrevocable decision. There is considerable evidence of racial discrimination in the application of the death penalty. After years of botched electrocutions and other horrors, it is clear that the methods of taking life are barbaric.

In Kentucky, and nearly all of the states that have capital punishment, executions are carried out by injection of a three-drug “cocktail.” This is supposedly more humane than the electric chair. The more one learns about lethal injection, the less humane it appears.

There is considerable evidence that inmates do not go peacefully or easily. Instead they are reported to feel suffocation, paralysis and excruciating pain. This is particularly true when poorly trained, unskilled workers are administering the drugs, which is all too often the case.