Missouri must release names of providers of lethal injection drugs, court says

The Guardian's Ed Pilkington reports that a local Missouri judge has ordered the state to disclose the names of two pharmacies that provided it with lethal injection drugs. The article states in part:

The judge ruled that the pharmacies involved could not be counted as part of the execution team, and thus offered protection from identification, and that as a result the state had to divulge the details of how it obtained pentobarbital for use in the death chamber...

 

The Guardian, joined by the Associated Press and three prominent local news organizations – the Kansas City Star, the St Louis Post-Dispatch and the Springfield News-Leader – held that it was in the public interest that citizens were aware of how the ultimate punishment was being wielded in their name.

 

Judge Jon Beetem excoriated the department of corrections for refusing to hand over to the media plaintiffs key documents that identified the pharmacists involved.

 

The judge ruled that the DOC had “knowingly violated the sunshine law by refusing to disclose records that would reveal the suppliers of lethal injection drugs, because its refusal was based on an interpretation of Missouri statutes that was clearly contrary to law”...

 

Since the Guardian’s litigation was first lodged, 13 inmates have been put to death by Missouri – going to their deaths without them or the public having any idea of where the drugs used to kill them came from, nor of their quality.

 

All that was known was that the pentobarbital probably originated a compounding pharmacy, an outlet that makes up small batches of the drug to order, normally for cosmetic purposes.

 

Along with most other active death penalty states, Missouri has increasingly wrapped itself in secrecy in an attempt to get around a powerful European-led boycott that has blocked trade in lethal injection drugs to US prison departments on ethical grounds.

 

In order to circumvent the stranglehold, states have taken to hiding the identity of pharmacists and medical laboratories involved in selling and testing the drugs for use in executions.

 

As the boycott tightened, death penalty states turned to ever more extreme – and in some cases bizarre – supply routes. Last year, BuzzFeed tracked down one such illegal supply line to an office complex in Kolkata, India.

 

The danger of carrying out the death penalty while withholding from the public the nature and the source of the drugs used was underlined by a succession of botched executions in which gruesome scenes were witnessed on the gurney.

The judge's opinion is available here.