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 11th 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.

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