Brown v. Vail

¶1 — This case began mainly as a constitutional challenge by three death row inmates, Darold Stenson, Cal Brown, and Jonathan Gentry (Appellants), to Washington’s three-drug lethal injection protocol for carrying out a sentence of death. The Thurston County Superior Court dismissed some claims on summary judgment and held a five-day bench trial in May 2009 to consider whether the three-drug protocol violated the Eighth Amendment prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishment” or Washington’s constitutional ban on “cruel punishment” in article I, section 14. The trial court upheld the…