The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed [opinion, PDF] the constitutionality of Ohio’s lethal injection method on Thursday, just two weeks prior to a scheduled execution.

The case stemmed from two death row inmates attempting to prevent their pending executions, claiming that Ohio’s midazolam-based, three-drug execution protocol presents a constitutionally unacceptable risk of pain and suffering.

The court based its determination on a two-part test in which the defendants needed to show first that Ohio’s execution protocol “presents a risk that is sure or very likely to cause serious pain and needless suffering…and also that an alternative method of execution is available, feasible, and can be readily implemented, among other things.”

However, the “[defendants] could produce no scientific evidence about the unseen effects of a 500-mg dose of midazolam, they could only speculate but could not prove that its use is sure or very likely to fail to prevent serious pain, and hence, they could not prove that its use presents a risk that the protocol as a whole is sure or very likely to cause serious pain.”

Additionally, their proposed alternative method of omitting the paralytic second drug and using additional medical monitoring of vital sign measurements to determine that the inmate was sufficiently insensate to serious pain before administering the painful third drug also failed as it was “only a slightly or marginally safer alternative.”

The court concluded that the defendants “bore the burden of proof on this issue and they have produced nothing on appeal to convince us that that the district court was mistaken, let alone prove to us that the district court committed clear error in deciding that they failed to satisfy this second part of the test… [W]e affirm the judgement of the district court.”

The inmates remain on death-row with the first scheduled execution for February 13.