On September 11, four news orga­ni­za­tions filed suit in fed­er­al court chal­leng­ing Pennsylvania​’s secre­cy about the source of its lethal injec­tion drugs as a vio­la­tion of the first amend­ment rights of the media and the cit­i­zens of Pennsylvania. The suit was filed by the Guardian, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and the Philadelphia City Paper in advance of the exe­cu­tion of Hubert Michael, which had been sched­uled for September 22, but has now been stayed because the state was not pre­pared to car­ry it out. Under a court order from 2012, the iden­ti­ty of the com­pound­ing phar­ma­cy that pro­vides the lethal injec­tion drugs was kept secret. Information was released to Mr. Michael’s lawyers, but not to the pub­lic or the media. ​“The infor­ma­tion sought by our clients is cen­tral to the debate about cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. If the drugs are not made prop­er­ly, they will not work prop­er­ly, and the pub­lic should be very con­cerned about that pos­si­bil­i­ty giv­en the grue­some exe­cu­tions we have heard about in oth­er states,” said Mary Catherine Roper, the lawyer who is rep­re­sent­ing the news­pa­pers. Media orga­ni­za­tions have also filed sim­i­lar suits in Missouri and Oklahoma over execution secrecy.

(E. Pilkington, ​“Pennsylvania chal­lenged over exe­cu­tion drugs secre­cy in fed­er­al court,” The Guardian, September 11, 2014). See Lethal Injection and DPIC’s lat­est pod­cast on Lethal Injections.

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