The Court will decide if the lethal injection drugs used to execute prisoners on death row violate the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Two inmates, Ralph Baze and Thomas C. Bowling, are challenging Kentucky's three-drug lethal injection protocol, claiming the combination of the drugs constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. In the wake of the Supreme Court's grant of certiorari on Sept. 25, states that use the lethal injection method have stayed executions pending the Court's decision.

The Court will make the recording available to the media soon after the conclusion of the oral argument. C-SPAN will air the oral argument as soon as it is released. The audio recording will also be archived online at www.c-span.org on the "America and the Courts" page.

Since 2000, C-SPAN has regularly made requests to the Supreme Court for immediate release of oral argument recordings for cases that have a heightened public interest. For nearly 20 years, C-SPAN has argued for greater public access to the federal judiciary. C-SPAN’s web site, http://www.c-span.org/camerasinthecourt/timeline.asp, chronicles C-SPAN’s involvement in the issue and features a collection of public statements made by the Justices regarding cameras in the Supreme Court.

About C-SPAN
C-SPAN, the political network of record, was created in 1979 by America's cable companies as a public service. C-SPAN is currently available in 91.7 million households, C-SPAN2 in 84.5 million households, and C-SPAN3 in 15 million households nationwide. C-SPAN Radio is heard nationally on Sirius Satellite and XM Satellite Radio, and in the Washington, D.C./Baltimore area at 90.1 WCSP-FM. For more information, visit www.c-span.org.