Oklahoma, like many other death penalty states, keeps secret the source of its execution drugs.
The drugs were given to Virginia from the Texas prison system, and both states have passed laws to keep the source of their execution drugs secret.
Nine inmates challenged the law, saying it could put them at risk of being subjected to unconstitutional cruel or unusual punishment and that it reneged on a previous agreement by the state to share information about the sources of its execution drugs.
Specific recommendations include potential information to capture from plant incident to better understand the sources of procedural execution failures and improve use of procedures in abnormal situations.
The sources of program executions being created and stored are rising in newer Windows systems, however, to analyze one source in isolation would uncover only a piece of information.
Susanna Gattoni and Seth Day, the attorneys for Warner and Lockett, said it was crucial for the men – and the public – to know the source of the drugs used in an execution in order to ensure that the inmates do not suffer an unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment.
Texas, like Oklahoma, continues to insist on keeping secret the source of the drugs it uses in executions, which precludes any meaningful institutional oversight," said Rob Owen, one of Campbell's attorneys.
Pruitt led the state's legal battle to keep the source of the lethal drugs used in the execution secret.
Now, Ohio lawmakers are trying to push through House Bill 663, which proposes to keep parts of the execution process — from the source of lethal injection drugs to the identities of doctors present in the death chamber — secret from the public, journalists, and the courts, ahead of the moratorium's expiration date on January 15 , 2015
