The Supreme Court has placed a temporary moratorium on the death penalty while it considers the legality of lethal injection, which should take months. Justices Scalia and Alito dissented from the opinion, which spared prisoner Earl Wesley Berry only minutes before he was to be killed.


Guardian:

The moratorium follows a decision by the supreme court last night to block the execution of a Mississippi inmate minutes before he was to be put to death.

Earl Wesley Berry, who has been on death row for 19 years for the murder of a woman, had been served his last supper and was 15 minutes away from execution when the court intervened.

The order for a delay marked the third time in just over a month that the supreme court has overruled state courts and the US court of appeals to block an execution.

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