[JURIST] The Missouri Court of Appeals, Western District [official website] on Wednesday ruled [opinion] that state prison officials are not required to disclose the names of the pharmaceutical suppliers that provide the state with pentobarbital, the drug used in lethal injection. The opinion reversed a March decision that found the state wrongly withheld the names of two pharmaceutical suppliers, in violation of the Sunshine Law [RSMo Ch. 610]. This court held that the law that protects the identity of executioners [RSMo 2015 § 546.720.1], an exception to the disclosure requirements of the Sunshine Law, also applies to those supplying the execution drug. The law protects the identity of “those persons who administer lethal gas or lethal chemicals and those persons, such as medical personnel, who provide direct support.” The state alleged, and the court agreed, that this includes the drug manufacturers, while prosecuting attorney Bernie Rhodes disagreed. Said Rhodes: “We believe to directly assist, you have to be there. … Selling the drugs is no different… from selling the syringes or the gurney or the light bulbs in the execution chamber.”

The death penalty has been a pressing issue across the country. Earlier this month the Mississippi House of Representatives approved a bill [JURIST report] that would allow execution by firing squad, nitrogen gas or electrocution if the current method of execution, lethal injection, is deemed unconstitutional by a court. Shortly before, 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. Last month Judge Michael Merz blocked [JURIST report] Ohio’s lethal injection protocol by deeming it unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment. In January the US Supreme Court refused to consider [JURIST report] a challenge to Alabama’s death penalty system.