Have Florida's Lethal Injection Procedures Been Repeatedly and Summarily Rejected ?

In Baze v. Rees, 553 U.S. 35, 128 S. Ct. 1520, 170 L. Ed. 2d 420 (2008), a majority of the Supreme Court determined that Kentucky's lethal injection procedure was constitutional under the Eighth Amendment, although the Court did not reach a consensus regarding the particular standard for evaluating the constitutionality of state execution protocols in future cases. See Baze, 553 U.S. at 41. In Henyard v. State, 992 So. 2d 120, 130 (Fla. 2008), the court determined that our previous holdings in Lightbourne and Schwab did not conflict with the plurality's narrow holding in Baze. See Marks v. United States, 430 U.S. 188, 193, 97 S. Ct. 990, 51 L. Ed. 2d 260 (1977) (stating that when the Supreme Court issues a decision and no rationale receives the vote of a majority of the justices, the holding of the Court is the "position taken by those members who concurred in the judgment on the narrowest grounds"). Further, in Ventura v. State, 2 So. 3d 194 (Fla.), cert. denied, 129 S. Ct. 2839, 174 L. Ed. 2d 562 (2009), the court found that "Florida's current lethal-injection protocol passes muster under any of the risk-based standards considered by the Baze Court (and would easily satisfy the intent-based standard advocated by justices Thomas and Scalia)." Id. at 200. Since then, this Court has repeatedly and summarily rejected constitutional challenges to Florida's lethal injection procedures. See, e.g., Davis, 26 So. 3d at 526; Reese v. State, 14 So. 3d 913, 919 (Fla. 2009); Tompkins v. State, 994 So. 2d 1072, 1081 (Fla. 2008).