On July 31, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder spoke about the death penal­ty review under­way at the Department of Justice and the need for greater trans­paren­cy in lethal injec­tion meth­ods. Holder said he was ​“great­ly trou­bled” by the recent botched exe­cu­tions, adding that states should pro­vide more infor­ma­tion about the drugs they plan to use. He said, “[F]or the state to exer­cise that great­est of all pow­ers, to end a human life, it seems to me… that trans­paren­cy would be a good thing, and to share the infor­ma­tion about what chem­i­cals are being used, what drugs are being used. And it would seem to me that would be a bet­ter way to do this.” He added, “[T]here is an oblig­a­tion, it seems to me, on the part of the exec­u­tive branch that’s charged with that respon­si­bil­i­ty to be forth­com­ing about the mech­a­nisms, the means by which this most seri­ous of exec­u­tive branch actions can be car­ried out.” On the progress of the death penal­ty review ordered by President Obama, Holder said, ​“We have peo­ple from our Civil Rights Division, our Criminal Division, var­i­ous oth­er com­po­nents with­in the depart­ment look­ing at our pro­to­col and tak­ing into account what we have seen hap­pen in the states recent­ly, as we try to work our way through how the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is going to impose the death penalty.”

Holder added that the fed­er­al gov­ern­men­t’s review of past mis­takes regard­ing FBI tes­ti­mo­ny in state tri­als should serve as an exam­ple for states, “[W]here we find mis­takes, we admit those mis­takes, we cor­rect them. And I think we set an exam­ple for the states. They should make the same kind of inquiries. Where they have made mis­takes, they should cor­rect them as well.”

(G. Ifill inter­view, ​“Holder: DOJ needs Congress’ sup­port to reduce immi­gra­tion back­log,” PBS (tran­script), July 31, 2014). See New Voices, Lethal Injection, and Federal Death Penalty.

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