The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit [official website] on Wednesday threw out [opinion, PDF] a challenge to Ohio’s execution secrecy law. Under HB 663 [text, PDF], the identity of individuals and entities that participate in the lethal injection process is treated as confidential and privileged. The court held that the prisoners who brought the challenge lacked standing because they could not show that they had been denied information to which they had a public record right. The lawsuit had previously been dismissed [JURIST report] by the lower court last year.

Capital punishment [JURIST op-ed] remains a controversial issue in the US and worldwide. In February the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit [official website] rejected [opinion, PDF] a Georgia death row inmate’s legal challenge [JURIST report] to the death penalty. In January Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood [official website] stated that he plans to ask lawmakers to approve the firing squad, electrocution or nitrogen gas as alternate methods of execution [press release] if the state prohibits lethal injection [JURIST reports]. The US Supreme Court in January ruled [JURIST report] in Kansas v. Carr [opinion, PDF] that a jury in a death penalty case does not need to be advised that mitigating factors, which can lessen the severity of a criminal act, do not need to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt like aggravating factors.