The high court's bluntly worded decision removes a distinction Nebraska has held for years: the only state in the country with electrocution as its sole means of execution.

Awaiting Justice

As accused killer Roy Ellis awaits his trial for the murder of 12-year-old Amber Harris, Amber's mother is watching developments following Friday's ruling by the Supreme Court. Melissa Harris says the ruling forces her to think even more about her daughter. She says, "Amber would not want to see anybody dead. I don't wish death on anybody on this earth, anybody. But as I've said the punishment doesn't have to be physical." As for the fate of Roy Ellis, Melissa says, "My faith had lacked for a long time but now, God will fix that."

"Condemned prisoners must not be tortured to death, regardless of their crimes," Judge William Connolly wrote in the opinion for the high court. Chief Justice Mike Heavican, who filed a dissent, was the only one of the seven judges to disagree that electrocution is cruel and unusual.

The high court made the ruling in the case of Raymond Mata Jr., convicted for the 1999 kidnapping and killing of 3-year-old Adam Gomez of Scottsbluff. Parts of the boy's body were found in a freezer and dog bowl at Mata's home. Bone fragments also were recovered from the stomach of Mata's dog.

The court said in its opinion that evidence shows that electrocution inflicts "intense pain and agonizing suffering" and that it "has proven itself to be a dinosaur more befitting the laboratory of Baron Frankenstein than the death chamber" of state prisons.

"Contrary to the State's argument, there is abundant evidence that prisoners sometimes will retain enough brain functioning to consciously suffer the torture high voltage electric current inflicts on a human body," Judge William Connolly wrote in the opinion for the court. "The evidence supports the district court's statement that instantaneous and irreversible brain death is a myth."

Nebraska Solicitor General J. Kirk Brown had argued for the state that the legal standard a method of execution must meet is to minimize the risk of unnecessary pain, violence and mutilation, not eliminate it. He said electrocution meets that test.

There are conflicting views on whether the decision would be accepted by federal courts on appeal.

Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning says he will ask the court to reconsider its ruling.

Bruning is quoted in a statement as saying, “I’m surprised and disappointed with the ruling and think the Supreme Court is mistaken. I think the decision is incorrect as a matter of law, and we intend to ask the court to reconsider it.”

Bruning added, “Nebraskans overwhelmingly support the death penalty and justice demands our state has a constitutional method of execution.”

A national expert on death penalty laws said the state high court appears to have shielded its decision from federal review.

"I think the Nebraska court purposely made this sort of immune from challenge by deciding it under their own constitution," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.

"That should end it. Appeals can always be filed, but I think this will stand and will not be reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court because they don't want to get into state courts interpreting their own constitution."

In its opinion Friday, the high court stressed repeatedly that its ruling did not strike the death penalty -- just electrocution as the method. In fact, Mata's death sentence was affirmed by the high court.

The court said the Legislature may vote to have a death penalty, just not one that offends constitutional rights.

That could leave lawmakers scrambling to approve another means of execution during the current legislative session.

But the speaker of the Legislature, Mike Flood, who supports the death penalty and helps set the legislative agenda, said it will be very difficult to approve a replacement for electrocution this late in the legislative session.

The governor could introduce a bill to change the method, Flood said. So could a legislative committee, but it would take a three-fifths vote of the Legislature to do so.

The latter seems unlikely given a close, first-round vote on repealing the death penalty last year.

Attempts to replace electrocution with lethal injection in Nebraska have failed in the past.

Jerry Soucie, Mata's attorney, said he was "really surprised the lengths they went to lay out in detail what's wrong with electrocution."

Friday's decision is another step in the decades-long erosion in support for electrocution. The use of the electric chair began to decline when Oklahoma adopted lethal injection in 1977, said Dieter, with the Death Penalty Information Center.

As more states adopted lethal injection, it became more difficult to justify the electric chair, he said.

"It's been a 30-year decline," Dieter said.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, electrocution is an option or a backup method of execution in nine states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.