The Supreme Court on Monday followed up on its ruling last week upholding the commonly used lethal injection method of execution and rejected appeals by 11 death row inmates in seven states.The ruling cleared the way for a resumption of executions that had been halted for nearly seven months while the justices considered a constitutional challenge to the three-drug cocktail used in the executions.
The ruling means more than a dozen death row inmates likely will get early execution dates. Officials in the leading death penalty states, like Texas, Virginia and Florida, said they planned to schedule executions that previously had been on hold.