"Judge to grill Kentucky about execution drugs," is by Brett Barrouquere of Associated Press, via the Louisville Courier-Journal. Here's an extended excerpt from the beginning:
Kentucky officials should be prepared to explain how and why they arrived at what drugs to use in a lethal injection and at what doses, a state judge said Monday, though he didn't decide how in-depth the explanation needed to be.
Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd told attorneys during a hearing in Frankfort that lawyers for multiple condemned inmates have a "fair inquiry" about the policy decisions. Shepherd said an order would be forthcoming about how much information the state must divulge.
"The state should be able to provide the basis for what the rationale is," Shepherd said.
The issue is the latest in the decade-long battle over how Kentucky executes people and whether the current system passes constitutional muster and was properly adopted. But, it is also a complicated issue because, by law, doctors in Kentucky are not allowed to take part in executions or any part of the execution process. That left the decisions about how executions work up to lawyers reviewing what other states did in their lethal injection methods.
Shepherd halted all executions in the state in 2010 on the eve of a scheduled lethal injection. The judge raised concerns about how the state evaluates the mental status of condemned inmates. The lawsuit has since been expanded to look at the drugs Kentucky uses after problematic executions in other states.
The article notes that Kentucky three post-Furman executions; the last was in 2008. Two of the three executions involved volunteers, who waived their appeals.
Kentucky Public News Service posts, "Freed Death Row Inmate Brings Story to KY," by Greg Stotelmyer.
Gary Drinkard, who was freed from prison in 2001 after six years on Alabama’s death row,
admits he's still angry at the legal system.
So Drinkard is traveling across Kentucky this week, speaking at churches and colleges about his wrongful conviction.He is part of Witness to Innocence, an organization that gives a voice to those freed from death row, which Drinkard says enables him to channel his resentment into action.
"If I were to get away from it, I feel like I would be letting a lot of people down, letting the attorneys down that fought for me, letting the people down that are still innocent on death row, letting my family down,” he explains. “I mean, it destroyed my family."
Earlier coverage from Kentucky begins at the link.
Comments