As legislators and the media have pressed Nebraska for information on its secretive execution practices, the executive branch has responded—the state’s leading newspapers say—with obfuscation and with a lawsuit that has created a state constitutional crisis. After adopting a new execution policy that the Lincoln Journal Star reported “was written in a single draft without input from the governor, attorney general, Corrections director, outside experts or other state officials,” the state Department of Correctional Services has drawn harsh criticism and multiple lawsuits for refusing to disclose information about its execution process to lawmakers, the media, advocacy groups, and prisoners. And after the state legislature issued a subpoena that would require Director Scott Frakes (pictured) to testify about the Department’s latest efforts to obtain execution drugs and to respond to allegations that it has not complied with federal drug laws on the handling of controlled substances, state Attorney General Doug Peterson sued the legislature to block Frakes from testifying. The Department’s most recent refusals to release information—after having lost $54,400 in taxpayer money in a failed attempt to illegally import execution drugs from India—prompted lawsuits from legal advocacy groups, lawmakers, and prisoners demanding protocol transparency. Senator Ernie Chambers, a long-time opponent of capital punishment, filed a formal complaint with the legislature’s Executive Board alleging, among other things, that the state’s execution protocol violates federal requirements for handling controlled substances and that its refusal to provide information on the lethal-injection drugs violates the Nebraska Public Records Act. In an editorial, the Omaha World-Herald wrote: “The Nebraska news media and members of the Legislature have raised legitimate questions on that score. They’ve asked the state Department of Correctional Services for information involving its purchase of death penalty drugs and its planned procedure for carrying out an execution, to ensure the applicable laws and procedures were all followed. So far, the department has refused to provide answers. Its message, instead, has been: Just trust us. That’s not good enough.” A Journal Star editorial criticized executive branch officials for “hypocritically refus[ing]” to subject themselves to public scrutiny. “We don’t know where the state obtained its lethal injection drugs,” the editors wrote.”We don’t know how the four-drug cocktail was tested. All we have … is Corrections’ word that they were done in accordance with the law. Given the state’s costly failed attempts to illegally buy execution drugs overseas, that alone is not good enough.” The editorial board said accountability means more than just punishing those convicted of murder. “Accountability must also extend to the state officials responsible for implementing and carrying out capital punishment. … Before Nebraska can hold convicted killers accountable, it first must do so for itself – something it’s shown more interest in obfuscating than pursuing.” The Omaha World-Herald encapsulated the issue as follows: “Is the state following the law in all respects regarding the death penalty, or isn’t it? State officials should stop trying to sidestep this central issue. For the sake of the public interest and respect for the law, they need to answer that question in full.”

(Joe Duggan, Hearing delayed in attorney general’s death penalty lawsuit against the Nebraska Legislature, Omaha World-Herald, May 5, 2018; Editorial: Nebraska officials need to provide answers to death penalty inquiries, Omaha World-Herald, May 3, 2018; Editorial: State must hold itself accountable before any killers are put to death, Lincoln Journal-Star, April 29, 2018; JoAnne Young, Lawmakers weigh subpoena of prisons director over death penalty questions, Lincoln Journal Star, April 20, 2018.) See Lethal Injection and Secrecy.

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