Nance v. Ward

Michael Nance, a Georgia death row inmate convicted of murdering Gabor Balogh, challenged the state’s lethal injection protocol under 42 U.S.C. §1983. He argued that his unique medical condition—severely compromised veins—made lethal injection a substantial risk of severe pain in violation of the Eighth Amendment. Nance proposed death by firing squad as an alternative, a method not authorized by Georgia law. The district court dismissed the suit as a habeas corpus petition in disguise, and the Eleventh Circuit affirmed, ruling that Nance’s claim was subject to AEDPA’s stringent bar on second or successive habeas petitions. The Supreme Court disagreed, holding 5-4 that when a prisoner identifies an alternative execution method that is not presently authorized by state law, his §1983 method-of-execution challenge is not the equivalent of a habeas petition and may proceed without satisfying AEDPA’s successive-petition requirements.

The Supreme Court reversed the Eleventh Circuit in a 5-4 decision. Justice Elena Kagan authored the majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kavanaugh. The Court held that Nance’s §1983 suit could go forward because firing squad was not a permissible method under Georgia law, meaning his claim was not a habeas petition subject to AEDPA’s second-or-successive restrictions. Justice Amy Coney Barrett dissented, joined by Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch. The case was remanded for further proceedings consistent with the majority opinion.

Whether a death row inmate’s method-of-execution challenge brought under 42 U.S.C. §1983 constitutes an application for habeas corpus relief that must meet the strict limits on second or successive petitions imposed by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA).

The ruling clarified the procedural boundary between civil rights suits under §1983 and habeas corpus petitions for death row inmates. It allows prisoners to challenge execution methods through §1983 even when their proposed alternative is unauthorized under state law, effectively relaxing some AEDPA procedural hurdles. This opened a limited but significant pathway for condemned inmates to press method-of-execution claims in federal court, potentially affecting lethal injection litigation across multiple states and prompting legislative debates on execution protocols.