By GINA HOLLAND

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court made it easier Monday for death row inmates to contest the lethal injections used across the country for executions and to get DNA evidence before judges in a pair of rulings that hinted at fresh caution on capital punishment.

“Today’s decisions are further evidence of the Supreme Court’s increasing discomfort with many aspects of the death penalty system,” said Steven Shapiro, national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

The vote was unanimous in allowing condemned inmates to make special federal court claims that the chemicals used in executions are too painful – and therefore amount to unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment.

It was a slap to the Bush administration and 25 states, which argued that allowing new appeals would jeopardize finality and justice for victims’ families.

“A series of court rulings have created so many chances for appeal that whether we have the death penalty or not is almost becoming moot when people are spending all of their natural lives on death row rather than having the sentence be complete,” Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said Monday.

The winner in the case was death row inmate Clarence Hill, who was strapped to a gurney with lines running into his arms to deliver the drugs in January when Kennedy, acting on behalf of the court, intervened and blocked the execution.

Following the court’s intervention in the Hill case, executions were stopped in California, Maryland and Missouri. Another state, North Carolina, began using a brain wave monitor in executions to assure a federal judge that inmates would not suffer pain.

The ruling lowers the bar for inmates who want to get a new hearing on evidence that was not used at their trials.

“Witnesses do not testify in our courtroom, and it is not our role to make credibility findings and construct theories of the possible ways in which Mrs. Muncey’s blood could have been spattered and wiped on House’s jeans,” Roberts wrote.

The federal government and 37 of the 38 states allowing capital punishment use lethal injection because it is considered more humane than hanging, gas chambers, electric chairs and firing squads. Nebraska still has the electric chair, although that, too, is being contested. Florida, like most states, uses three chemicals: a pain killer, a drug that paralyzes the inmate and a third that causes a fatal heart attack.

Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the pro-death penalty Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, predicted that more inmates will win stays. He said he did not expect states to stop using lethal injection, only make changes in their processes to satisfy judges.