death penalty – National Freedom of Information Coalition

Editorial: MO Judge appropriately rules to release execution drug info

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When it comes to the death penalty, we have opined before that all matters of execution deserve extra scrutiny.

Even when appeals are inconvenient to the survivors of victims of horrible crimes, our legal system has a constitutional obligation, and in our view a moral one, to examine every aspect to ensure that those we are executing have exhausted their legal protections and their rights under the constitution. Continue…

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Executions aren’t supposed to be easy, quiet or hidden

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The legislative rationale behind Senate Bill 2237 presumes falsely that the business of taking an inmate’s life as punishment for a capital crime should be easy, quiet, free from confrontation or protest, and hidden as much as possible from public view or scrutiny.

That rationale is incredibly flawed.

This legislation presumes that how the state implements our harshest punishment for the most heinous crimes should be a secret ceremony conducted behind closed doors and without any accountability to the taxpayers.

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NC legislature passes bill limiting execution transparency

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RALEIGH — A bill that would allow quicker changes to North Carolina's execution process and block information about the manufacturing of lethal injection drugs has passed the legislature and is going to the governor.

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Editorial: Improve execution process with greater transparency

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Joseph Wood has the right to know about the lethal-injection drugs that will be used if he is executed on Wednesday. He should also know about the training of the execution team and how the execution protocol was developed.

Withholding that information is not simply violating Wood's right to know. It is violating the rights of all of us.

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Public records lawsuit over Louisiana execution procedures thrown out

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From The Republic:

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana — A lawyer's attempt to get more details about the execution procedures planned for his condemned client through Louisiana's public records law was tossed out Friday by … State District Judge William Morvant, [who] dismissed the lawsuit against the Department of Corrections, saying the complaint wasn't properly filed.

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