According to an article from the Supreme Court Debates in 2008 called "Does the Kentucky Legal Procedure Constitute 'Cruel and Unusual Punishment'", the answer to the document's title is no.

Kentucky started using lethal injections as the main form of capital punishment in 1998. On August 9, 2004, two Kentucky inmates on death row, Ralph Baze and Thomas Bowling, filed against jail warden, governor, and Department of Corrections commissioner with a case stating the lethal injection was a cruel and unusual punishment. Both a State circuit court and the state's Supreme Court ruled in favor of the execution protocol.

The article mentioned above argues that "cruel and unusual punishments" are so when the executed are tortured or die slowly. Kentucky's injections include pancuronium bromide, a muscle relaxer, which in certain doses cuts of respiratory function and makes passage into the next life easier. Another drug in the lethal injection procedure is thiopental, used to decrease neuron activity; the dosage is three grams, enough to almost eliminate any chance of the prisoner remaining awake during the protocol. Therefore, that method of execution does not violate the amendment.

If the protocol is considered humane by excluding the pain factor, why was Bowling and Baze's case taken to the Supreme Court? The inmates brought the *risk* of substantial pain to the table, pointing out that if protocol is done incorrectly, the last moments of a prisoner's life is agonizing and undignified. A mistake with the drugs or tools could accidentally cause a "unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain", the petitioners agued. Bowling and Baze also stated that any potential pain risks are "foreseeable", and thus, avoidable.

When looked at closely, the eighth amendment doesn't specify about the insubstantial risk of suffering, nor anything about human error in relation to cruel and unusual punishment. The Supreme Court finally decided that Kentucky's lethal injection is as humane as possible with the resources and technology we currently have.