[JURIST] U.S. District Judge J. Clay Fuller [official profile] on Thursday ruled [order, PDF] that the state of Georgia does not have to reveal information about its one-drug execution method. In a suit brought by two death row inmates challenging the constitutionality of Mississippi’s execution method, the challengers sought to establish that there is a known and available alternative to Mississippi’s three-drug method, which they claim to be unconstitutional. It is known that Georgia uses only the barbiturate pentobarbital for its executions, but the identity of the provider of the drug is protected by a 2013 state law mandating that such information is a “state secret.” Not knowing the identity of the provider, the Mississippi challengers are unable to prove that Mississippi could obtain the drug as an alternative to its current execution method.

Capital punishment [JURIST op-ed] remains a controversial issue in the US and worldwide. Earlier this month, the Florida Supreme Court held [JURIST report] that a trial court may not impose the death penalty unless the jury’s recommended sentence of death is unanimous. Shortly before, the US Supreme Court vacated [JURIST report] the death sentence of an Oklahoma man convicted of killing his girlfriend and her two children in a case where the trial judge permitted family members to recommend the sentence to the jury. Also in October, a group of UN human rights experts spoke on the subject of the death penalty and terrorism, calling the death penalty ineffective [JURIST report], and often times illegal, in deterring to terrorism. And last month in Oklahoma, after a botched execution in 2014 and numerous drug mix-ups in 2015, Attorney General Scott Pruitt refused [JURIST report] to set execution dates until new protocols have been approved.