Mississippi Supreme Court rules drugs used in executions can remain undisclosed News
Mississippi Supreme Court rules drugs used in executions can remain undisclosed

The Supreme Court of Mississippi [government website] ruled to keep the identification of drugs used in executions a secret in a 7-2 ruling [text, PDF] Thursday. The lawsuit was brought against the Mississippi Department of Corrections [official website] by the Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center [advocacy website]. During oral arguments , James Craig from the RSMJC argued that it was important to disclose the identities of the drugs used in executions, and that doing so would pose “no economic threat [to pharmacies, and] no physical threat, adding “[a]cross the country this is just being used as a dodge to prevent people from knowing where these dollars are going.” In contrast, the state attorney general has held the position that disclosing the identity of the drugs would cause a threat to the pharmaceutical companies that supply the drugs, and further jeopardize the availability of drugs that are already difficult, and sometimes impossible, to obtain. Ultimately, the court deferred to the legislature, although RSMJC pointed out that the law securing the identity of the drugs against a request for disclosure [text, PDF] was enacted after the original suit was brought it 2014. Writing for the majority, Justice Michael Randolph, quoting and citing a case from Georgia and two previous Mississippi cases, said, “We must presume that the Mississippi Legislature meant what it said and said what it meant. It would be ludicrous for this Court to blindly follow the Mississippi Public Records Act of 1983 (MPRA) as it existed in 2014 when the documents at issue were requested and act as though we did not know the law, as adopted by the Legislature in 2016 and readopted in 2017.”

The death penalty has been a pressing issue across the country. University of Mississippi School of Law professor William W. Berry III wrote [JURIST commentary] about the execution methods crisis. Last Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld [JURST report] a preliminary injunction against Ohio’s lethal injection process. In March, the Tennessee Supreme Court upheld [JURIST report] the state’s lethal injection protocols in a unanimous opinion. In February, the Mississippi house approved a bill [JURIST report] allowing firing squad executions. Also that month a judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of Ohio refused to lift [JURIST report] a preliminary injunction that delays executions in Ohio. In January Judge Michael Merz blocked [JURIST report] Ohio’s lethal injection protocol by deeming it unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment. Also in January the US Supreme Court refused [JURIST report] to consider a challenge to Alabama’s death penalty system. In December a report by the Death Penalty Information Center found that the use of capital punishment in the US is at a 20-year low [JURIST report].