The legal analyst posts, "Why Lawyers and Judges Should Watch Executions," at the Atlantic. He is writing about Georgia's recent videotaped execution. Here is an extended excerpt from this must-read analysis:
No one involved in the latest drama, mind you, wants to see taped executions come to the primetime television lineup. Instead, the criminal defense attorneys who convinced Fulton County Superior Court Judge Bensonetta Tipton Lane to authorize the taping of the DeYoung's execution argued that the current legal and political debate over injection protocols and drug mixes would be aided by giving judges access to tapes of the executions. The jurists would benefit from seeing direct evidence of precisely how state executions are unfolding now that Georgia is using pentobarbital instead of thiopental in its lethal injection cocktail.
This, in turn, would better enable the courts to accurately determine whether such injections violate the "cruel and unusual punishment" clause of the Eighth Amendment. The debate on this topic has gained ferocity recently because Georgia, like other states that still perform executions, have had to scramble this year to concoct a new deadly "cocktail' after the Italian maker of one of its ingredients, thiopental, decided that it no longer wanted to be a part of what United States Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun once famously called America's "machinery of death."
So why, specifically, did Walker's attorneys want the tape? "We've had three botched lethal injections in Georgia prior to Mr. DeYoung, and we thought it was time to get some hard evidence," defense attorney Brian Kammer told The New York Times. Walker's attorneys told the court:
Following three consecutive irregular Georgia executions, DEA seizure of Georgia's thiopental supply for its violation of federal drug importation laws, exposure of illegal narcotics activity by the medical personnel overseeing state lethal injections, Georgia's precipitous switch from thiopental to pentobarbital -- an anesthetic whose manufacturer warns is untested and unsafe for use in judicial elections, and the subsequent botched execution of Roy Blankenship, who lurched and grimaced in obvious pain for several minutes while dying, Mr. Walker, who stands to be executed in the same manner, moved to preserve evidence of Georgia's next intended execution.Judge Lane, smartly, framed her ruling in practical terms. She wrote:
The briefing on this motion reflects that eye witnesses to an execution may often have varying recollections regarding the details of what happened. In some of the other cases cited by the respondent the State has attacked the conclusions suggested by witnesses on the basis that the witness has not witnessed an execution performed by the State of Georgia and/or is unfamiliar with the protocols used here. These arguments tend to underscore the potential relevance of the evidence the petition seeks to gather.If prison officials have nothing to hide, in other words, they should at least be willing to gather and hand over such videos for subsequent use by the courts; a simple matter of giving judges the "best evidence" available. Echoing Judge Lane, Richard Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Center told me Monday that the use of videotaped executions within the criminal justice system makes sense for several reasons:
Basically, the country is in a period of experimentation (with involuntary human subjects) as it tries to find a suitable means of execution. Although I believe the problems with the death penalty far exceed this narrower question, it is one over which there has been a veil of secrecy. Prisons and state governments have been reluctant to explain why they are choosing certain new drugs, whether they have explored all alternatives, and whether they have consulted about the side effects of new drugs being used. Having an objective view of what actually happens in the execution chamber could provide some degree of transparency in evaluating the various procedures.
And:
Update: I received an interesting note Tuesday afternoon from Megan McCracken, an expert in lethal injection law at the University of California/Berkeley School of Law. She wrote:
"The videotaping of Mr. DeYoung's execution is a step in the right direction in terms of shedding light on what happens during an execution. However, videotaping only captures what witnesses see and cannot transmit the information we actually need. When something goes wrong in a lethal injection execution, witnesses, lawyers for condemned prisoners, and the public are prevented from knowing what happened because of the paralytic that is administered to the prisoner and the secrecy surrounding the entire process. A video will not tell us what actually happened in the room where the drugs are administered, and until DOCs reveal what happened behind the scenes, it is likely we will never know what happened to Mr. Blankenship or any of the other men and women who have been executed by an unnecessarily dangerous process."
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