A Supreme Court decision to hear the petition of three death row inmates questioning the use of the drug midazolam for lethal injection may result in the execution of the three being stayed until the court resolves the issue, said Dale Baich, one of the lawyers of the inmates.

The decision of the justices to hear the petition contrasts with their rejection of the petition by death row Charles Warner in Oklahoma who was executed last week. The Supreme Court rejected a stay on his execution even if he had a pending appeal on the constitutionality of the use of midazolam, reports The Atlantic.

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The convicts claimed that the sedative used by four states does not properly lead to loss of consciousness, so the person being given the lethal injection goes through an extremely painful death.

Majority of the justices who thumbed down Warner's request didn't comment on their vote, while Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented and pushed for the court to address the serious question raised over the lethal injection procedure used by Oklahoma.

In her opinion, Sotomayor wrote, "I hope that our failure to act today does not portend our unwillingness to consider these questions."

Seven days after the execution of Warner, the Supreme Court agreed to finally tackle the question on the use of midazolam.

The last time the Supreme Court tackled the constitutionality of a lethal injection protocol was in 2008 in Baze v. Rees. The justices then ruled that the three-drug cocktail, made of sedative sodium thiopental, paralytic pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride, didn't breach the Eighth Amendment.

In 2011, the last American pharmaceutical firm to manufacture sodium thiopental withdrew from the market, causing states to search for other sources overseas. As a result, the European Union embargoed lethal injection drug, while the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency discovered in raids that there are stockpiles of sodium thiopental imported in spite of the lack of license. The stocks were seized.

Midazolam became one of the alternative cocktails initially used by Florida. Outside Florida, the use of the drug has led to three botched executions.

Ohio used midazolam and hydromorphone on Dennis McGuire in January and he felt his whole body burning. Arizona used the same drugs in July on Joseph Wood who gasped for air for almost two hours.

Oklahoma used a three-drug cocktail on Clayton Lockett in April, but wrong IV placement didn't deliver sufficient drug into his bloodstream to paralyze the death convict, and he died of a massive heart attack, while he writhed in pain.

Tagsmizadolam, lethal injection, capital punishment, supreme court