A media coalition filed notice Tuesday that it will appeal a federal judge's September ruling dismissing arguments that it had a First Amendment right to information about execution drugs used by the Arizona Department of Corrections and the qualifications of its executioners.
In his ruling, U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow informed the media outlets, which include the Guardian, the Associated Press, The Arizona Republic, KPNX/12News, KPHO/Channel 5 and the Arizona Daily Star, that they had a First Amendment right to report on the issues, but the DOC did not have an obligation to turn over the information.
Among the concerns listed by Snow was a belief that identifying companies that provide drugs makes them targets for anti-death-penalty advocates and discourages them from selling the drugs to state departments of corrections.
Execution by lethal injection has repeatedly been deemed constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Similar arguments were already dismissed in District Court in Phoenix in another case brought by several Arizona death-row inmates. That decision has also been appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
No one has been put to death in Arizona since the 2-hour-long execution of Joseph Wood in July 2014.
Wood gasped on the execution gurney as executioners pumped into him 15 supposedly lethal doses of the drugs midazolam and hydrocodone. District Court Judge Neil Wake immediately imposed a stay of all executions until the incident was investigated and fully litigated.
The stay was only lifted this June after the death-row inmates reached a settlement agreement with the Arizona Department of Corrections.
Even so, the state has not yet filed with the Arizona Supreme Court for any warrants to execute prisoners, in part because it has had difficulty obtaining drugs to perform the executions.
Aside from access to information about the drugs and the executioners, the two lawsuits have significantly changed how future executions are to be carried out in Arizona:
- The drug midazolam was removed from Arizona's execution protocol even though it was OK'd by the U.S. Supreme Court.
- The Arizona Department of Corrections has pledged to carry out further executions using the anesthetic sodium thiopental or the barbiturate pentobarbital without adding paralytic drugs that could mask pain and suffering. Neither drug is available to prisons at present from U.S. pharmaceutical firms, and the state has indicated that it will continue looking for them overseas or have them made to order by compounding pharmacies.
- Corrections Director Charles Ryan can no longer exert total discretion and make last-minute changes to execution protocols that have been painstakingly hashed out in court.
- Journalists and other witnesses can now see all stages of an execution, starting from the moment the condemned person is walked into the death chamber and strapped to the gurney. A camera will monitor the drug-injection control board so witnesses can see how many doses are pushed into the prisoner.
Source: Arizona Republic, October 17, 2017
⚑ | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us:
deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.
Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!
"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
