Ralph Baze was convicted of capital murder in Powell County, Kentucky, for the murder of two law enforcement officers in 1992 as they tried to serve an arrest warrant on him. Baze has always maintained that the killings were in self-defense—probably the most difficult defense to prove when the victims are cops.

            Baze gained international attention in 2008 when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the three-drug protocol used to carry out executions in the State of Kentucky and at the time 36 other states. Baze was one of the death row inmates who challenged the constitutionality of the three-drug protocol as being cruel and unusual. When the Supreme Court agreed to decide the issue once and for all in September 2007, executions across the country were put on hold until the high court rejected the Eighth Amendment challenge to the three-drug protocol in 2008. Baze had bought more time on earth for himself and others.

            But convicted of killing two cops and having gained a measure of international fame, it was widely anticipated that Baze would be one of the first, if not the first, inmates Kentucky chose to execute under the Supreme Court-approved three-drug protocol. But Baze’s victims and other death penalty supporters were disappointed when the Kentucky Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge that state officials had not properly adopted the three-drug protocol; namely, failing to follow mandatory administrative procedures, including public hearings to allow citizens to speak for or against the proposed protocol.

            Last month the Kentucky Supreme Court issued a ruling that the proper administrative procedures indeed had not been adhered to prior to implementation of the three-drug protocol. While the ruling did not have any bearing on the constitutionality of the protocol, it effectively stayed all executions under the protocol until the proper administrative procedures could be followed in accordance with the state’s Administrative Procedures Act.

            The ruling came just three days after Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway had requested execution dates for Baze and two other condemned inmates. The 4-3 ruling upset some state officials, including dissenting justice Bill Cunningham who said the ruling will open the door to future challenges to the protocol. “There is no end to the creative mind of the condemned,” the justice wrote. “Our decision here today gives the guilty more time to live. It gives innocent families of the victims more time to suffer.”

            Baze was overjoyed with the news that he will have more time to live. “It gives us through Christmas,” the condemned man told Associated Press. “That’s a couple of months. That’s good.”

            That grasping of the human life rope reflects the tragedy inherent in the death penalty. Condemned men are wasting away, trying desperately to secure a couple more months of life. This will probably be Baze’s last Christmas. He knows it. It will come and go fast. There will be no merriment, joy or happiness. Just an opportunity to gasp life’s precious breaths a little longer.