"Gag orders: Even before drug shortage, Alabama sought secrecy about lethal injection," is by Tim Lockette in the Anniston Star.
Across the country, death penalty states are working feverishly to keep capital punishment on track years after manufacturers of key execution drugs pulled out of the business. Inmates have challenged new drug combinations as potentially cruel and unusual punishments, or on the grounds that they simply have a right to know, in advance, what poisons will be used to kill them.
States have increasingly responded by making large swaths of the death penalty process a secret. At least a half-dozen states have laws on the books that make part or all of the process for lethal injection confidential, and most of those laws have been passed or strengthened since the death-drug shortage began in 2011.
Alabama may soon join them. The House of Representatives voted 77-19 earlier this month to pass a bill that would make confidential the names of people involved in performing executions — and, crucially, the names of the people or companies who make the drugs.
"Lawyer: Ala. could name execution drug suppliers," is by Kim Chandler of Associated Press, via the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
A lawyer for a death-row inmate argued Friday that Alabama is free to disclose the suppliers of its lethal-injection drugs, and is wrong to cite her client's case as a reason not to do so.
Suhana Han, who leads the defense team for death-row inmate Thomas Arthur, said in a statement that state corrections officials had no basis to cite a confidentiality order in the case as a reason for denying separate public-records requests seeking information on the suppliers filed by The Associated Press and other news media outlets.
Anniston Star coverage is, "Lawyer: Court order shouldn't block death penalty info," also by Lockette.
A lawyer for an inmate on Alabama's death row says a court-ordered confidentiality clause in her client's case shouldn't prevent the Alabama Department of Corrections from releasing information on suppliers of drugs for lethal injection.
"Information about the suppliers belongs to the State of Alabama, and the state is free to disclose that information as it sees fit," lawyer Suhana Han wrote in an emailed statement Friday.
Han is the lead defense attorney for Thomas Arthur, a death row inmate who has challenged the state's practice of execution by lethal injection. Arthur alleges that the state's lethal injection drug cocktail could subject inmates to pain and suffering that violates the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
"Corrections come under fire for refusal to release death penalty information," is by Kala Kachmar and Brian Lyman in the Montgomery Advertiser.
An attorney involved in a challenge to Alabama’s execution methods said Friday that the Department of Corrections “had no basis” to use a protective order to deny Freedom of Information requests from the Montgomery Advertiser and other Alabama news outlets.
Suhana S. Han, a New York attorney representing death row inmate Thomas Arthur who is challenging the procedures, said in a statement that the 2012 order “only governs information produced in the litigation.” Representatives of the state, the statement said, “had not agreed to supply any information about the suppliers of lethal injection drugs.”
“Such information about the suppliers belongs to the state of Alabama, and the state is free to disclose that information as it sees fit,” Han said.
The Advertiser, The Anniston Star and the Associated Press filed separate freedom of information requests on the drugs being used and the protocols employed in the state’s executions. The Advertiser sought the information in light of questions about the drugs being used in capital punishment, reports of drug shortages, questions about the ways other states, most notably Missouri, were acquiring them, and Alabama Legislative efforts to make the identities of those involved in the manufacture of drugs used in lethal injections confidential.
Earlier coverage from Alabama begins at the link.
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