Should State Executions Proceed Under a Veil of Secrecy?

In his Sidebar column in the N.Y. Times, Supreme Court reporter Adam Liptak recently discussed the concerns about states denying death row inmates information about how they will be executed. Liptak highlighted the recent execution of Michael Taylor in Missouri, where the state has made the pharmacy providing the drugs for lethal injection part of its “execution team,” thus obscuring any failings the pharmacy may have. This secretive approach drew criticism from a minority of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, and a dissent from three Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor said they would have granted Taylor a stay of execution to consider his due process rights to information about the state’s method for killing him. As Liptak said, “[I]t is hard to see how death row inmates can argue that a given method of execution violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment if they are barred from knowing what the method is.” Though Taylor was executed, other death row inmates are raising similar claims that may come before the Supreme Court.

(A. Liptak, “Deciding if Inmates Get to Know How They’ll Be Executed,” New York Times, March 10, 2014). See U.S. Supreme Court and Lethal Injection.