A fed­er­al dis­trict court has ordered the Alabama Department of Corrections to release its lethal-injec­tion pro­to­col and unseal tran­scripts and plead­ings relat­ed to the failed exe­cu­tion of Doyle Hamm. In a May 30, 2018, order, Judge Karon Owen Bowdre, Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama said ​“how Alabama car­ries out its exe­cu­tions” is ​“a mat­ter of great pub­lic con­cern,” and ruled that the pub­lic’s ​“com­mon law right of access to the sealed records relat­ing to Alabama’s lethal injec­tion pro­to­col” out­weighed argu­ments to keep the records secret. Doyle Hamm was sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in Alabama on February 22. Despite Hamm’s repeat­ed warn­ings that his ter­mi­nal ill­ness would make it impos­si­ble to estab­lish IV lines, and after an ini­tial stay of exe­cu­tion issued by Judge Bowdre was over­turned by the appel­late courts, Alabama unsuc­cess­ful­ly tried for more than two hours to set an IV before call­ing off the exe­cu­tion. Hamm had filed suit against the state seek­ing to bar Alabama from mak­ing a sec­ond attempt to exe­cute him. The par­ties reached a con­fi­den­tial set­tle­ment in which Alabama agreed it would not exe­cute Hamm, leav­ing ques­tions about Alabama’s pro­to­col and exe­cu­tion process unan­swered. Three media out­lets — the Associated Press, The Montgomery Advertiser, and the Alabama Media Group — inter­vened, seek­ing pub­lic release of the pro­to­col and judi­cial records. Alabama argued that pro­vid­ing the records to the media would be improp­er because ​“the media attempts to gin up pub­lic scan­dal” about the death penal­ty. The court reject­ed that accu­sa­tion as unsup­port­ed by any facts, empha­siz­ing that ​“Public dis­cus­sion is not the same as pub­lic scan­dal. The pub­lic,” she wrote, ​“needs to know how the State admin­is­ters its laws; with­out such knowl­edge, the pub­lic can­not form an edu­cat­ed opin­ion on this very impor­tant top­ic.” The court’s order allows the state to redact from the records infor­ma­tion that could reveal the iden­ti­ties of the indi­vid­u­als who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the exe­cu­tion. State offi­cials have not indi­cat­ed whether they will appeal.

(Kim Chandler, Judge tells Alabama to release lethal injec­tion infor­ma­tion, Associated Press, May 30, 2018; Max Greenwood, Alabama offi­cials ordered to release infor­ma­tion about exe­cu­tion pro­to­col, The Hill, May 30, 2018; Melissa Brown, Court grants Advertiser’s effort to reveal Alabama exe­cu­tion pro­to­col, Montgomery Advertiser, May 31, 2018.) Read the Court’s Opinion. See Lethal Injection and Secrecy.

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