Today's Los Angeles Times publishes the editorial, "The lethal injection debate: How much should death row inmates know?"
This page opposes the death penalty as barbaric and immoral, the irreversible end result of an often flawed judicial process. While most of the industrialized world has done away with the practice, 32 states and the U.S. government still pursue it.
Many states, though, are having trouble procuring drugs because manufacturers are increasingly refusing to sell to executioners. Some states have turned to compounding pharmacies, which ordinarily customize drugs for patients for whom manufacturers' drugs don't work. A subset of those states have adopted laws barring public disclosure of the compounding pharmacies to preclude protests.
This is wrong, as we've said before in the Oklahoma case. If the government insists on executing its citizens, it must do so in as transparent a way as possible, so that death row inmates can know whether their punishment violates the 8th Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
And that goes for California too.
Earlier coverage of lethal injection drug secrecy begins at the link.
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