Back in the U.S., the Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 against a death row prisoner in Missouri who argued that he should be executed with lethal gas rather than lethal injection because of a medical condition that would lead to excruciating pain and could result in him suffocating to death.

The Constitution forbids “cruel and unusual” punishment, but conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch, representing the majority opinion, argued that it doesn’t say all pain must be avoided. He said, a painless death was “a luxury not guaranteed to many people, including most victims of capital crimes.”

In his dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer likened the decision to sentencing the prisoner to torture, saying it would be “no less painful” than “burning at the stake.”