On May 15, the Associated Press and four oth­er media orga­ni­za­tions filed suit against the state of Missouri, ask­ing a state court to order the Department of Corrections (DOC) to release infor­ma­tion about the source of its lethal injec­tion drugs. Under Missouri law, the iden­ti­ty of the ​“exe­cu­tion team” is secret, and the DOC has inter­pret­ed the drug sup­pli­er to be a part of that team. The oth­er four news orga­ni­za­tions are the Guardian‑U.S., the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Kansas City Star, and the Springfield News-Leader. The news orga­ni­za­tions filed pub­lic records requests with the DOC, ask­ing for infor­ma­tion about the drug itself, its source, qual­i­ty test­ing, and the qual­i­fi­ca­tions of those who pre­pared it. They were giv­en a copy of the exe­cu­tion pro­to­col, but told that the oth­er records were closed, ​“pur­suant to the state secret doc­trine.” Dave Schulz, an attor­ney for the news orga­ni­za­tions and co-direc­tor of the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic at Yale Law School, said, ​“We assert that there is a con­sti­tu­tion­al right for the pub­lic to know the drugs that are used when a state puts some­one to death.”

Missouri is plan­ning to exe­cute Russell Bucklew on May 21 (just after mid­night) using drugs from an undis­closed source. Doctors have raised con­cerns that Bucklew’s phys­i­cal con­di­tion might result in severe pain dur­ing the exe­cu­tion. Bucklew’s attor­neys have asked that the exe­cu­tion be video­taped as a way to pre­serve evi­dence about the process.

(J. Salter, ​“Media file law­suit to chal­lenge exe­cu­tion secre­cy,” Associated Press, May 15, 2014). Read the medi­a’s Petition. See Lethal Injection.

Citation Guide