A/67/279 Appeal in the United Kingdom rejected the petitioners’ arguments, 13 the European Court found a violation of the prohibition of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment because whatever the method of execution, the extinction of life involved some physical pain. In addition, the Court held that foreknowledge of death at the hands of the State must inevitably give rise to intense psychological suffering. 36. In 1994, the High Court of the United Republic of Tanzania found, in the Mbushuu’ case 14 that the death penalty was unconstitutional on the grounds that execution by hanging violated the right to dignity of a person and constituted inherently cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. In the Kigula case (2009) 15 before the Supreme Court of Uganda, Justice Egonda Ntende, in dissent, cited powerful evidence of the cruel, inhuman and degrading nature of hanging. Finding the expert evidence concerning hangings to be chilling, Justice Ntende concluded that various practices associated with hanging in Uganda, including subjecting those who do not die instantly to bludgeoning or the plucking off of heads, constituted, without a doubt, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. 37. In 1994, the Human Rights Committee rejected an argument that lethal injection constituted cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment 16 but has not revisited the issue since new evidence has emerged indicating that the combination of drugs used in lethal injection can cause excruciating pain. 17 However, in concluding observations, both the Human Rights Committee (A/50/40, para. 296) and the Committee against Torture (CAT/C/USA/CO/2, para. 31) called on the United States of America, as one of the countries in which lethal injection is used, to review its execution methods in order to prevent severe pain and suffering. 38. Following a number of executions in the United States, it has recently become apparent that the regimen, as currently administered, does not work as efficiently as intended. Some prisoners take many minutes to die and others become very distressed. New studies conclude that even if lethal injection is administered without technical error, those executed may experience suffocation, and therefore the conventional view of lethal injection as a peaceful and painless death is questionable. 18 Experts suggest that current protocols used for lethal injection in the United States probably violate the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. 39. This new evidence, however, was rejected by the Supreme Court of the United States of America in Baze et al. v. Rees (2008). 19 The Court agreed to hear a challenge to the use of lethal injection as a method of execution following a case in __________________ 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 8 Case No. C4/2008/3083 (citation No. 2009 EWCA Civ 7). Republic v. Mbushuu alias Dominic Mnyaroje and Kalai Sangula, High Court of the United Republic of Tanzania, 22 June 1994. Supreme Court of Uganda in Attorney General v. Susan Kigula and 417 others (Constitutional Appeal No. 3 of 2006), 2009. For example, Cox v. Canada, communication No. 539/1993. Most states in the United States of America continue to execute prisoners by injecting them with a combination of three chemical substances: a barbiturate to anaesthetize; pancuronium bromide or pavulon (a paralytic agent); and potassium chloride (the toxic agent which induces cardiac arrest). It is suggested that the paralytic agent may well disguise the suffering actually experienced by the person executed. For example, Teresa A. Zimmers and others, “Lethal injection for execution: chemical asphyxiation?”, PLoS Medicine, vol. 4, No. 4 (24 April 2007). Available from www.plosmedicine.org. Baze et al. v. Rees, Commissioner, Kentucky Department of Corrections et al. of 16 April 2008, case No. 07-5439. 12-45812