Supreme court allows planned Alabama execution to proceed

By David Beasley

ATLANTA (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court allowed Alabama's planned execution of a man convicted of murdering a police officer to proceed on Thursday, lifting a halt imposed by a lower court over concerns about one of the drugs used in the state's lethal injection mix.

The court's decision came a few hours before Alabama planned to execute 40-year-old Torrey McNabb for the 1997 murder of Montgomery police officer Anderson Gordon. Gordon was shot five times as he sat in his patrol cruiser, according to court records.

On Monday, a federal judge in Alabama stayed McNabb’s execution to allow him time to challenge the state’s use of the drug midazolam.

McNabb and other death-row inmates have argued that the drug amounts to cruel and unusual punishment because it fails to render a person unconscious during an execution.

Lawyers for the state asked the Supreme Court to lift the stay on Wednesday, however, arguing that midazolam puts a person into a deep coma.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz and David Beasley; Writing by Keith Coffman; Editing by Tom Brown)