March 20, 2009
Officers' killer on death row loses decisions in 2 state courts
The Kentucky Supreme Court and a lower court on Thursday swept away a death row inmate's 4 challenges to his conviction and the way the state executes condemned inmates.
The multiple decisions in cases brought by Ralph S. Baze leave a dwindling number of legal avenues for the man convicted of killing Powell County Sheriff Steve Bennett and Deputy Arthur Briscoe in Eastern Kentucky nearly 17 years ago as they tried to serve a warrant on him.
Baze was the lead plaintiff in a case the U.S. Supreme Court used in 2008 to rule that the lethal injection protocol used by nearly three dozen states did not amount to cruel and unusual punishment.
The Kentucky Supreme Court ruled Thursday that it wouldn't reconsider a November ruling that Baze's trial had been held in the proper county.
The crime was committed in Powell County, but the trial was moved to Rowan County by a special judge. Baze, 53, challenged the location of the trial, saying it was improperly moved.
In 3 other cases, Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip J. Shepherd dismissed a suit brought by Baze claiming it is against the law for an emergency medical technician to insert an IV line without a doctor present to supervise. Executions must be carried out that way because Kentucky law prohibits doctors from taking part.
Shepherd noted that Baze might not have legal standing to bring the challenge, but even if he did, he couldn't show that the EMTs violated the law because their role in executions is limited.
"The EMT's sole purpose is to insert the IV," Shepherd wrote in a decision handed down Thursday. "That is the extent of their involvement in the execution."
In another case, Shepherd ruled that Baze brought too soon a challenge to the state's definition of insanity and the process of determining whether he's incompetent to be executed.
Shepherd ruled that the state cannot challenge the law until it applies to him, which it doesn't until he's under a death warrant setting his execution date.
Shepherd also rejected Baze's challenge to a ban on his attorneys speaking to on-duty staff and Death Row inmates about his mental state.
Baze's attorneys say their client has become delusional.
Baze still has 1 case pending before the Kentucky Supreme Court, claiming the state did not properly implement a new execution protocol in 2004. He's also involved in 3 federal court cases challenging various aspects of the death penalty.
(Source: The Associated Press)
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