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| Ruling could clarify Missouri's executioner secrecy law |
| By stltoday.com- Jeremy Kohler |
| Published: 02/06/2014 |
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Last month, federal Judge Beth Phillips said in a ruling in a death penalty case that it weighed heavily on her that condemned inmate Herbert Smulls had no legal means to learn more about how Missouri’s execution drug is made. Under a Missouri law enacted in 2007, information that could be used to identify Missouri executioners is exempt from the state’s open records law. Under one of the law’s provisions, executioners can sue anyone who knowingly releases their identities. When Missouri hired a compounding pharmacy last fall to produce drugs for its lethal injections, the Department of Corrections said it considered the pharmacy, as part of the execution team, to be secret under the law. By the time Smulls’ case got to Phillips, the 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals had already ruled that he was not entitled to learn more about the pharmacists making Missouri’s drugs for executions. The issue was moot, the court said, because Smulls had not proposed a more humane way to die. Phillips denied Smulls’ petition for a stay of execution, and the state of Missouri executed him Jan. 29. But now Phillips, a judge in the U.S. District Court Western District of Missouri in Kansas City, is expected to rule on a First Amendment challenge to that law. The American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri sued the Department of Corrections last year to try to overturn the law so it could post documents to its website that identified executioners without fear of being sued. Read More. |
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