"Miss. inmate sues over execution drug info," is the AP report filed by Jack Elliott Jr., via the Washington Times.
The Mississippi Department of Corrections is asking a state judge to rule that information on execution drugs and suppliers is confidential and exempt from the state’s Public Records Act.
The motion came in its response to a lawsuit filed by lawyers for a woman who faces the death penalty for killing her husband. Attorneys for Michelle Byrom say the state is providing no information on whether the drugs are safe and reliable or whether they are tainted, expired, counterfeited or compromised in some way.
The corrections agency said it has provided essentially everything requested except for the drug maker’s identity.
Byrom and her attorneys asked Hinds County Chancery Judge William Singletary to hold the agency in violation of Mississippi’s public records law.
Earlier coverage of the Mississippi lethal injection challenge begins at the link.
Also, today, the Jackson Free Press posts, "An Innocent Woman? Michelle Byrom vs. Mississippi," by Ronni Mott. Case documents are at the link.
Michelle is now down to what could be her final appeal.
On Feb. 24, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case, and Jim Hood, Mississippi's attorney general, requested an execution date: March 27.
If Mississippi executes Michelle, now 56, she will be the first woman the state has put to death in 70 years. It may also be a horrible injustice.
"John Grisham couldn't write this story," said Warren Yoder, executive director of the Public Policy Center of Mississippi, in an interview with the Jackson Free Press.
"In any reasonable world, this would be a short story by Flannery O'Connor," Yoder wrote in an email. "Instead, it is happening now in our Mississippi."
Junior's confession isn't the only evidence the jury did not get to see.
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