MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) - Alabama on Monday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to let it proceed with an execution of a man convicted of killing his estranged wife and father-in-law in 1993.
The Alabama attorney general asked the nation's high court to overturn an injunction blocking Thursday's execution of Jeffery Lynn Borden, 56.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday stayed Borden's execution through Oct. 19. Borden is challenging the humaneness of Alabama's three-drug lethal injection combination that begins with the use of the sedative midazolam. The three-judge panel ruled that there should be time to let Borden's challenge play out in court.
"We recently held that there is a genuine issue of material fact regarding whether Alabama's current method of execution violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment and remanded for further proceedings," the panel wrote.
State lawyers argued that the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed several executions to proceed using the same drug protocol, and that Borden "presents nothing new that would justify a stay."
"Alabama has already carried out four executions using this protocol," lawyers for the state wrote in the Monday court filing. "Any questions concerning three-drug midazolam protocols have effectively been answered."
Borden was convicted of killing his wife, Cheryl Borden, and her father, Roland Harris, during a Christmas Eve gathering in Jefferson County in 1993.
The state attorney general's office wrote that trial testimony showed Borden, who was separated from his wife, brought their three children to the gathering at Harris' house after a weeklong visit. As his estranged wife was helping to move the children's belongings, Jeffrey Borden shot her in thehe back of the head in front of their kids, state attorneys said.
An attorney for Borden said previously that the Alabama inmate is mentally ill after a head injury and had a diminished ability to control himself or understand the full implications of his actions.