Jackson Free Press

[Verbatim from attorney general] Jackson, MS-The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has ruled on an appeal by four Mississippi death row inmates who filed suit claiming the State's method of lethal injection is unconstitutional. The suit was dismissed by U.S. District Judge W. Allen Pepper back in July based on the statute of limitations. In other words, the inmates waited too long to file their lawsuit. The Court of Appeals ruling upholds Judge Pepper's ruling. "We anticipated the court's affirmation of Judge Pepper's ruling in this case," said Attorney General Jim Hood. "The statute of limitations had run on these cases. This was simply an attempt by these inmates to slow down the legal process surrounding their executions."

The suit was originally brought against Department of Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps and Lawrence Kelly, the Superintendent of the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman by inmates Alan Dale Walker, Paul Everett Woodward, Gerald James Holland, Earl Wesley Berry and Dale Leo Bishop. Berry and Bishop have since been executed. Their lawsuit claimed that Mississippi's lethal injection protocol is unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment because it causes pain.

The inmates could seek review by the full 5th Circuit or challenge the decision in the United States Supreme Court.