The Eighth Circuit yesterday vacated the preliminary injunction against the execution of Arkansas murderer Don Davis. Davis "shot and killed Jane Daniel in the course of burglarizing her home in Rogers," Arkansas in 1990. Davis v. State, 44 S.W.3d 726 (Ark. 2001). Chuck Bartels has this story in the Pine Bluff Commercial. The Eighth Circuit opinion in Nooner v. Davis is here.

Once a state inmate's sentence of death has become final on direct review in the state's courts, there is no impediment to filing a § 1983 action challenging the constitutionality of a state's lethal injection protocol as long as lethal injection is the established method of execution, the protocol is known, and no state administrative remedies are available.

Relying on Gomez v. U. S. Dist. Court for the N. Dist. of Calif., 503 U.S. 653, 653-54 (1992) and Cooey v. Strickland, 479 F.3d 412, 421-22 (6th Cir. 2007), the court holds that Davis's belated challenge is untimely.