The U.S. Supreme Court has OK'd lethal injections. But the decision has cleared up very little as far as North Carolina's unofficial death-penalty moratorium goes.

While the N.C. Attorney General's Office digests the high court's ruling, state lawmakers should be coming together and preparing to move the state forward on this issue.

The Supreme Court signed off on the procedures used in Kentucky, where three drugs are used to sedate, paralyze and kill inmates. Similar methods are used in North Carolina and dozens of other states.

But in North Carolina, executions have been on hold for more than year for reasons not directly addressed by the ruling. The main culprit behind five of the last six scheduled executions to be stayed was the order of a federal judge demanding a physician monitor the lethal injection to ensure the condemned inmate did not suffer.

While this order and appeals are being tossed around in the courts, the state medical board adopted a policy that threatened to punish those physicians who take part in executions. A physician's charge is to do no harm, and participating in executions runs counter to that, said the medical board. That policy also is being challenged in the courts.

It seems N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper was hoping for some clarification from the Supreme Court on where to take this boondoggle. Finding none, it's clear North Carolina needs to either declare an official moratorium or pass a new law.

This will require lawmakers to rise to the task. It should require collaboration between the legislature and the medical community.

While nothing gets done to resolve the issue, the line on death row gets longer; the court system continues to be taxed by the legal loophole; families and victims of terrible crimes are left in limbo.

Some tough questions need to be answered, and those answers need to be ironed out by way of the state's legislative system.