There is lethal injection news from several jurisdictions today. Let's begin in Tennessee.
"Tennessee plans executions in secret," is by Brian Haas for the Tennessean. It's via USA Today. Here's the beginning:
The state of Tennessee doesn't want you to know how it will kill the condemned.
It doesn't want you to know who will flip the switch, sending a lethal dose of pentobarbital through the veins of death row inmates. And it doesn't want you to know how it obtained that pentobarbital — which isn't available from any legal drug manufacturer — as well. State correction officials have even banned the media from visiting inmates on death row.
As Tennessee makes an unprecedented push to set execution dates, it is doing so in the shadows, cloaking its plans in secrecy. Legislators passed a bill a year ago that allowed the state to withhold all information about the drugs it plans to use to execute death row inmates. Georgia, Oklahoma and Missouri have enacted similar laws shrouding information about their lethal injection drugs.
But a collection of death row inmates has sued Tennessee to pull back that shroud.
"Law reportedly allows Tennessee to plan executions in secret," is by Aliyah Frumin at MSNBC.
“Tennesseans should be concerned because these executions are ostensibly for them,” Kelley Henry – an assistant federal public defender representing 11 inmates suing the state to make the information public – told the newspaper. “They are carried out in the name of the people.”
He added: “The people have a right to know that the Department of Corrections isn’t torturing citizens using public funds.”
The state has scheduled at least 10 executions through 2015. Since 1960, the state has only executed six people.
Earlier coverage from Tennessee begins at the link.
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