The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has ruled that a man on death row in Georgia can proceed with his lawsuit claiming that death by lethal injection would be cruel and unusual punishment and that a firing squad should be used instead.
In a decision made after the U.S. Supreme Court remanded the case back to the Eleventh Circuit, a three-judge panel said inmate Michael Wade Nance has stated a “plausible claim for relief” by arguing that his use of the anticonvulsant drug gabapentin for back pain would make his brain less responsive, or possibly unresponsive, to a drug used by Georgia for lethal injections called pentobarbital.
