Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood is asking a Hinds County judge to keep secret the identity of Mississippi's execution drug supplier while the state appeals an order to release the name.
Earlier this month, Hinds County Chancery Judge Denise Owens ruled that the state's public records law required release of the information, sought by death penalty opponents at the Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center.
In papers filed last week, Hood's office said the state prison system should be able to keep concealing the name, because if it's forced to release the information, there's no point in appealing.
The justice center argues the state has little hope of winning on appeal, and that rights are being violated by the state's defiance of its public records law.
Owens has yet to rule.
Alabama lawmakers are also trying to shield the identities of companies who provide the state with execution drugs, but even without it, the Alabama Department of Corrections releases little information about the process of putting a person the death.
The prison system declined to release the suppliers of execution drugs, as well as other information about the process of execution. The Associated Press requested information about drug purchases and the execution protocol, including the procedures to make sure an inmate is unconscious.
The prison system cited ongoing litigation over the death penalty. In a letter dated Feb. 19, the department said it "generally considers execution related documents, including the purchase of execution drugs, confidential and exempt from public disclosure under Alabama law.
"However, because of pending litigation, we will not release any execution information," the letter said. The department did not cite any statutes for the exemption.
However, a lawyer for an inmate challenging the state's execution method said the state could release the information.
"The state is free to do what it wants with this information, and it chooses to continue to shroud Alabama's lethal injection procedures in secrecy," said lawyer Suhana Han, who represents death row inmate Tommy Arthur.
The Alabama House of Representatives on March 11 added the secrecy language to a bill that would allow the state to use the electric chair if the prison system was unable to find the needed drugs for an execution. Currently, the state puts inmates to death by lethal injection unless the inmate requests the electric chair. No one has done so.
The bill's sponsor, Republican Rep. Lynn Greer of Rogersville, said Alabama and other death penalty states are having trouble obtaining the drugs because pharmacies fear lawsuits and backlash from death penalty opponents.
European manufacturers have stopped selling the drugs to death penalty states, leaving some states unable to carry out death sentences or turning to drug combinations or compounding pharmacies for the drugs.
The bill would prohibit the disclosure of the "name, address, qualifications, and other identifying information of any person or entity that manufactures, compounds, prescribes, dispenses, supplies, or administers the drugs or supplies utilized in an execution." The names would be off limits to the courts, except in death penalty challenge or injury cases, in which they would be put under seal.
The proposal now goes to the Alabama Senate. Opposed lawmakers said the state had no compelling reason to keep the information secret.
The House approved a similar bill last year, but the measure did not get a vote in the Alabama Senate.
The last execution in Alabama occurred July 25, when Andrew Lackey was put to death. It was the state's first execution since October 2011. State officials acknowledged last year that Alabama had exhausted its supply of execution drugs. The state in September announced the adoption of a new drug combination. Arthur was to be the 1st inmate put to death with the new combination, but his execution was stayed.
Source: Associated Press, March 16, 2015
