"How Alabama executes," is the Anniston Star editorial.
If the state of Alabama is going to execute condemned prisoners, it must be upfront and transparent about the process. Today, that’s not happening.
Until that changes, Alabama and its embattled Department of Corrections carries the stench of a government that wishes the public didn’t have a right to know how it plans to kill those on death row.
On Tuesday, Star reporter Tim Lockette outlined the situation of inmate Thomas Arthur, 73, who has been on death row since 1983 for the murder of Troy Wicker of Muscle Shoals. Arthur’s execution has been delayed as Alabama, along with other states that execute prisoners by lethal injection, dealt with a shortage of the necessary drugs.
Stocked with its new three-drug execution cocktail — an anaesthetic, a drug that relaxes the muscles, another drug that stops the heart — Alabama is on the verge of resuming executions. Problem is, the state hasn’t revealed the protocol it will follow when executions begin again at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore.
Today's Cleveland Plain Dealer publishes the editorial, "Death penalty protocol in Ohio needs light, not darkness."
Draft legislation that would allow providers of lethal injection drugs to remain anonymous and that would indemnify doctors assisting with state executions from censure by their state licensing boards is emanating from Attorney General Mike DeWine's office.
What's next, allowing the execution team to wear masks?
This latest step in Ohio's death penalty dance -- stemming from a series of missteps that have put the state's execution protocol under examination by a federal judge – will push Ohio even further into the dark ages.
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