States Try to Hide Their Execution Methods as Drugmakers Hinder Lethal Injection

Truthout - [South Carolina] lawmakers are debating a bill that would further shroud the state’s lethal injection protocols from public scrutiny by shielding the identities of the drug suppliers. More than a dozen states have passed such “shield” laws that conceal key details about the lethal injection process, including the identities of the execution team or drug suppliers, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit research organization. All 17 states that carried out executions between January 2011 and August 2018 withheld some information about the process. Georgia even calls information about its executions a “state secret.”

Backers of such laws say they are needed to protect suppliers and medical professionals involved in executions. But Austin Sarat, a political science and law professor at Amherst College, who teaches courses on the death penalty, said such policies conceal the problems connected to lethal injection. “The legitimacy of capital punishment has been tied up with the promise that it’s safe and humane,” he said. Secrecy hinders “the public’s ability to judge what is being done in its name.”