Bowling v. Kentucky Department of Corrections

Opinion of the Court by

Justice ABRAMSON.

Appellants Bowling and Baze were convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1991 and 1994, respectively. Each has pursued and exhausted all direct appeals and collateral attacks in the state courts and, jointly, they prosecuted a declaratory judgment action challenging Kentucky’s lethal injection protocol on several grounds including the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment set forth in the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and Section 17 of the Kentucky Constitution. That declaratory judgment action prompted a seven-day bench trial in…