On July 18, a Georgia Superior Court judge ruled that the state’s new law shield­ing the source of lethal injec­tion drugs inter­fered with Warren Hill​’s right to chal­lenge his method of exe­cu­tion and is there­fore prob­a­bly uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. According to the law, infor­ma­tion per­tain­ing to drugs used in exe­cu­tions is clas­si­fied as ​“con­fi­den­tial state secrets” and can­not be dis­closed. Judge Gail S. Tusan said the law ” ​“To be exe­cut­ed with­out being aware of basic infor­ma­tion regard­ing the pro­to­cols the State will use to car­ry out such an exe­cu­tion is sure­ly an irrepara­ble harm.” Moreover, she said nei­ther Warren Hill ​“nor the gen­er­al pub­lic, has suf­fi­cient infor­ma­tion with which to mea­sure the safe­ty of the drug that would be used to exe­cute [Hill], as there is insuf­fi­cient infor­ma­tion regard­ing how it was com­pound­ed.” Judge Tusan con­clud­ed that the law improp­er­ly inter­fered with the court’s duty to make a judg­ment about the planned exe­cu­tion: “[the law] explic­it­ly exempts from judi­cial review the very infor­ma­tion that would be nec­es­sary for a court to deter­mine the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of an inmate’s exe­cu­tion.” The court stayed the exe­cu­tion of Hill, who also has a peti­tion before the U.S. Supreme Court regard­ing his mental retardation.

The state is like­ly to appeal Judge Tusan’s order to the Georgia Supreme Court. Hill’s death war­rant expires on July 20. UPDATE: In May 2014, the Georgia Supreme Court reversed the low­er court’s deci­sion by a vote of 5 – 2 and upheld the Georgia secrecy law.

(DPIC post­ed, July 19, 2013; read full text of Judge’s order here). See Lethal Injection.

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