MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) - A lawyer for a death-row inmate argued Friday that Alabama is free to disclose the suppliers of its lethal-injection drugs, and is wrong to cite her client’s case as a reason not to do so.
Suhana Han, who leads the defense team for death-row inmate Thomas Arthur, said in a statement that state corrections officials had no basis to cite a confidentiality order in the case as a reason for denying separate public-records requests seeking information on the suppliers filed by The Associated Press and other news media outlets.
“Such information about the suppliers belongs to the state of Alabama, and the state is free to disclose that information as it sees fit,” Han said.
In denying the public-records requests Thursday, Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner Kim Thomas cited a confidentiality order in a 2011 lawsuit that challenged the state’s lethal-injection drug protocol as potentially cruel and unusual punishment.
Arthur’s lawyers filed the suit after the state announced it was changing one of the drugs in its three-drug protocol. The two sides in 2012 agreed to a confidentiality agreement to not disclose certain information that could be revealed in discovery in the case including “all testimony, documents, or information related to prior executions of any Alabama death row inmate.”
Han said the order would only preclude lawyers from releasing the information they uncovered during the case.
“That order only governs information produced in the litigation, and the state has refused to disclose any information about the suppliers of the lethal injection drugs in Mr. Arthur’s case,” Han said.
A spokesman for the Alabama Department of Corrections said the state stood by its interpretation.
“Ms. Han is entitled to her interpretation of the order. The ADOC interprets it differently,” spokesman Brian Corbett said.
Alabama and other states that employ lethal injection for executions are fighting to keep the source of their drugs secret as a national scarcity has forced states to use substitutes or turn to compounding pharmacies to make the drugs.
The Alabama prison system is seeking legislation that would make suppliers and manufacturers a state secret with names off-limits to both the public and the courts. The sponsor of the bill has said that the state needed the legislation so compounding pharmacies would be willing to sell the drugs, allowing the state to resume executions.
The last execution in Alabama took place July 25. Prior to that, there had not been an execution since October 2011.
The Alabama House of Representatives has passed the bill. A Senate Committee put an amendment on the bill saying that a judge could order the release of the information.
The Department of Corrections has also declined to release any information about how much of the execution drugs it has on hand.
The department announced in April 2011 that because of a national shortage of sodium thiopental, that it would begin using pentobarbital as the first of the three-drug protocol, followed by pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride. The pentobarbital is used to render an inmate unconscious, while the next two drugs stop the inmate’s respiratory functions and heart.
Arthur’s lawyers argued that pentobarbital is slower to take effect than sodium thiopental and that inmates would feel the painful effects of the final two drugs. The state has disputed that claim, saying the 2,500 milligrams used is greater than the amount needed to induce a barbiturate coma and much greater than the dose that would be used for anesthesia in a surgical setting.
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