Atmore – Alabama death row inmate James Harvey Callahan was granted a stay of exeuction Thursday by the U.S. Supreme Court. The stay came just over an hour before he was scheduled to die by lethal injection.
Until the court acted, Callahan was scheduled to be the first inmate executed since the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to consider whether lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment.
Callahan's attorney had asked the Supreme Court for a stay yesterday after a federal appeals court lifted a stay granted by a Montgomery judge.
Earlier this month the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a Kentucky challenge to lethal injection, a case that has delayed executions nationwide. A ruling in that case is unlikely before spring.
Alabama uses lethal injection in its executions.
On Tuesday, a federal appeals court in Atlanta lifted the stay of Callahan's granted by a federal judge in Montgomery on December 14th.
The appeals court said Callahan waited too late to challenge the method of execution.
Callahan was sentenced to die for the kidnapping, rape and murder of Jacksonville State University student Rebecca Suzanne Howell in February 1982.
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