Interesting article in today's Boston Globe:

US executions in a lull as court examines lethal injection

A quarter-century has elapsed since the United States experienced as long a pause in executions as the one the Supreme Court has occasioned with its current examination of lethal injections.
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No one has been put to death since Sept. 25 and the earliest that executions will probably resume is in the summer. Forty-two people were executed in 2007, the lowest total in 13 years. Last month, New Jersey became the first state in four decades to abolish the death penalty.

But when the justices return from their holiday break and hear arguments today in a lethal injection case from Kentucky, their questions are unlikely to focus on whether capital punishment or even the method of lethal injection is right or wrong.

The two death row inmates whose challenge is before the court are not asking to be spared execution or death by injection. Their argument, at its most basic, is that there are ways to get the job done relatively pain-free.

While the Supreme Court debates which drug cocktail will do the job "painlessly," states are revisiting their death row cases and finding wrongful convictions--sometimes too late. It's the fear of executing an innocent person that is slowing that nation's rate of executions, not concerns over pain suffered during lethal injection.

It will be interesting to see the technical results of this challenge, whether this poison or that poison is the most "humane" for administering the death penalty, but it won't answer the real question America is grappling with.