The Ohio leg­is­la­ture is con­sid­er­ing a bill that would pre­vent the pub­lic and the courts from know­ing the name of com­pound­ing phar­ma­cies that pro­duce lethal injec­tion drugs for the state and the iden­ti­ty of med­ical per­son­nel par­tic­i­pat­ing in exe­cu­tions. Critics of the bill say such inter­fer­ence with the courts and the First Amendment right to free speech would be uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. At a com­mit­tee hear­ing, Dennis Hetzel, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Ohio Newspaper Association, said, ​“This bill like­ly will prompt end­less lit­i­ga­tion – a pre­cise sit­u­a­tion you are try­ing to avoid.” Similar secre­cy laws in Pennsylvania, Missouri, Arizona, and Oklahoma are being chal­lenged in court by media orga­ni­za­tions. The non-par­ti­san Legislative Service Commission also raised con­sti­tu­tion­al con­cerns about a pro­vi­sion of the bill that would void any con­tract if it had a clause pro­hibit­ing the sale of lethal injec­tion drugs to the state, say­ing that could vio­late state and fed­er­al pro­hi­bi­tions against impair­ing con­tracts. Ohio State University law pro­fes­sor Doug Berman ques­tioned whether the state should go to such lengths to pre­serve lethal injec­tion: ​“If the only way we can pre­serve this method of exe­cu­tion is by mak­ing it more secret, that, to me, is some­thing of a sign that we should­n’t be try­ing to pre­serve this method of execution.”

(J. Pelzer, ​“Death-penal­ty reform bill may vio­late con­sti­tu­tion, law­mak­ers told,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, November 19, 2014). See Lethal Injection and Recent Legislation.

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