"Some courts are being prudent by waiting to see how the Supreme Court will go," said Lisa McCalmont, a consultant to the death penalty clinic at the University of California law school.
Fewer than 50 executions will take place this year, even if several states pushing ahead with lethal injections defeat legal efforts to stop them. The last time executions numbered fewer than 50 was in 1996, when there were 45.
Since executions resumed in the United States in 1977 after a Supreme Court-ordered halt, 1,099 inmates have died in state and federal execution chambers. The highest annual total was 98 in 1999, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes capital punishment.
In 2007, 42 people have been executed.
Texas, where 26 prisoners have been put to death this year, plans no more executions in 2007 after federal and state judges stopped four death sentences from being carried out.
Executions also have been delayed in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, and Oklahoma since the high court announced on Sept. 25 that it would hear a challenge to Kentucky's lethal injection method. Courts in California, Delaware, Missouri, North Carolina, and Tennessee previously cited problems with lethal injection procedures in stopping executions.
The last person executed in the country was Michael Richard, 49, who died by lethal injection in Texas the same day the Supreme Court agreed to consider the constitutionality of lethal injection procedures in Kentucky. A Texas state judge refused that day to accept an appeal from Richard's lawyers, saying it had arrived after office hours.
Kentucky's method of lethal injection executions is similar to procedures in three dozen states. The court will consider whether the mix of three drugs used to sedate and kill prisoners has the potential to cause pain severe enough to violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
