Nance v. Ward

Background

A man on Georgia’s death row sued under a federal civil‑rights law to stop the state from executing him by lethal injection. He says his veins and medicines make lethal injection likely to cause severe pain. Georgia’s law authorizes only lethal injection. As his safer alternative, he proposed death by firing squad, a method used in some other States. A federal appeals court treated his case as a habeas petition and dismissed it as a second or successive challenge because he had earlier sought habeas relief.

Reasoning

The Supreme Court rejected the appeals court’s approach. It said a prisoner’s method-of-execution claim can proceed under §1983—a civil‑rights lawsuit—even if the prisoner proposes an alternative not currently authorized by state law. The Court explained that such relief would not necessarily block the State from enforcing the sentence. Instead, a court order finding an alternative feasible gives the State a path to carry out the sentence, for example by changing its law or adopting an approved protocol.

Real world impact

The decision lets death-row prisoners bring civil‑rights suits to challenge how a state plans to execute them while proposing out‑of‑state alternatives. It prevents automatic channeling of these claims into habeas corpus and the special dismissals that can follow there. The Court also warned judges to guard against last‑minute delay tactics and said courts should consider timeliness and other procedural tools.

Dissents or concurrances

A dissent argued that courts must take a State’s law as it currently exists and that, because Georgia authorizes only lethal injection, the inmate’s claim would necessarily block execution and therefore belongs in habeas.