Last week, an increasingly radical conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court took yet another significant step in its descent into lawlessness. Without even offering a majority opinion to provide its reasoning, the court, by a 5-4 vote, cast aside well-established principles of deference to trial courts, as well as long-standing norms of procedure and collegiality within the Supreme Court itself, all in the service of allowing Alabama to execute a man who simply wanted to choose the means by which he would be killed.

The Alabama Legislature approved a new method of execution in 2018 using nitrogen gas, which is thought to be a less painful way to die. All inmates on death row were given 30 days to fill in a form electing to use nitrogen. Death row inmate Matthew Reeves did not choose the nitrogen option during the 30-day period. The unrebutted evidence, however, showed that the form provided by prison officials required at least an 11^th grade reading level to understand it, whereas Reeves, who had significant cognitive limitations, could read at no greater than a second or third grade level.