he United States Supreme Court’s April 16 decision in Baze v. Rees marks the end of the legal debate over lethal injection protocol used by 35 states to execute their worst murderers.

Some news reports on the decision were not uniform on this point. The headline in the New York Times read “Challenges Remain for Lethal Injection,” Time Magazine reported “A False Consensus on Lethal Injection,” while CBS News told us “The Justices Deliver Fuzzy Ruling.”

To be fair, some Supreme Court decisions can be confusing and it is not unusual for reporters and even judges to misinterpret some of them. But the remarkable aspect in the Baze decision is its clarity.

Seven of the nine justices concurred that Kentucky’s procedure is constitutional. This group included Justice John Paul Stevens, the liberal dean of the court, and Justice Steven Breyer, a Clinton appointee who rarely breaks from the court’s four-member liberal wing.

Of the six additional opinions written in Baze, five agreed with the chief justice’s conclusion that, “A state with a lethal injection protocol substantially similar to the protocol we uphold today would not create a risk (of severe pain) that meets (the) standard” for a stay of execution.

Another key point of agreement was the court’s unanimous rejection of the catch-22 requirement of doctor participation in executions. Apparently, the entire court recognized the attempt by death penalty opponents to abolish executions by imposing two incompatible conditions, i.e., doctors must participate, but the American Medical Association forbids doctor participation.

In their separate opinions, the justices did some venting. Justice Stevens, while agreeing that the Kentucky lethal injection protocol is not unconstitutional, now believes that the death penalty itself may be. Justice Antonin Scalia’s opinion attacks this view.

Justice Breyer’s opinion makes a scholarly argument challenging the validity of medical evidence claiming that the initial anesthesia given to render the murderer unconscious is inadequate, allowing him to experience pain when the other two drugs are injected.

“The upshot is that I cannot find, either in the record or in the readily available literature that I have seen, sufficient ground to believe that Kentucky’s method of lethal injection creates a significant risk of unnecessary suffering,” wrote Justice Breyer.

Even more remarkable is the dissenting opinion by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined by Justice David Souter. The major thrust is that they oppose the Kentucky protocol because it does not include a simple procedure utilized in California and Florida to verify that the murderer is unconscious before the last two drugs in the protocol are administered. This suggests that the remaining two members of the court’s liberal wing, who did not concur in Baze to uphold Kentucky’s lethal injection process, would join the other seven justices in a decision upholding California’s.

There is nothing fuzzy here. States that have been enforcing the death penalty in recent years can start enforcing it again. States like Nebraska, Maryland and New York, whose highest appellate courts have obstructed enforcement of the death penalty, will not benefit from the Baze decision until the membership on those courts change.