[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.H., PENN., S.C., FLA., ALA., LA.

[Rick Halperin]

May 22



TEXAS:

Supreme Court Denies Review in Death-Penalty Case Where Texas Judge 
Rubberstamped Prosecution’s Findings



The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review a case in which the Texas courts 
decided a death-row prisoner’s appeal by adopting the prosecution’s fact 
findings and legal arguments word-for-word without providing the defendant’s 
lawyer any opportunity to respond. In a May 20, 2019 ruling, the Court without 
comment denied the petition for writ of certiorari filed by Ray Freeney, 
thereby permitting the Harris County prisoner’s conviction and death sentence 
to stand. The decision was the latest in a series of cases in which the Court 
has refused to take up the issue of state-court rulings that are verbatim 
copies of proposed orders written entirely by the prosecution. In June 2018, 
researchers at the University of Texas School of Law Capital Punishment Center 
exposed the systemic rubberstamping of prosecutors’ pleadings in Harris County 
capital cases. The researchers found that county judges had adopted 
prosecutors’ proposed findings of fact verbatim in 96% of 191 capital cases in 
which factual issues had been contested. Harris County has executed 129 men and 
women, more than double the number executed in any other county in the United 
States and more than have been executed in any state in the country other than 
Texas.

In a Washington Post op-ed, columnist Radley Balko said Freeney’s case not only 
raises questions about the practice of judges rubberstamping prosecutorial 
findings, but also “test[s] the absurd, outer limits of AEDPA’s deference to 
state courts.” AEDPA is the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, the 
habeas corpus amendments passed by Congress in 1996. Those amendments have 
significantly reduced federal courts’ ability to review and redress violations 
of a state defendant’s right to a fair trial and sentencing by requiring 
federal judges to give a high level of deference to state court findings. Balko 
explains, “to get a federal court to review a state court’s ruling, a defendant 
must show not only that the state court (and the state courts that upheld the 
ruling) were wrong, but that the prevailing ruling was either ‘contrary to, or 
involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law,’ or 
an ‘unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence 
presented.’ Put plainly, you must convince the federal courts not only that the 
state courts were wrong, but also that they were unreasonably wrong.”

When Ray Freeney’s case came before Texas District Court Judge Renee Magee, his 
appeal lawyers sought a new sentencing hearing because his trial lawyers had 
failed to investigate and present to the jury evidence that Freeney suffered 
from mental illness and had been the victim of chronic child abuse. Judge 
Magee, who had spent 19 years as a prosecutor in the Harris County District 
Attorney’s Office, asked for briefs, and received 204 proposed findings of fact 
from the prosecution, based on over 800 pages of testimony. The next day, she 
adopted the factfinding verbatim. Freeney’s defense attorneys were never given 
an opportunity to respond, or to submit their own brief containing new evidence 
to support their claim that his trial attorneys had provided inadequate 
counsel. The University of Texas study has demonstrated that “rubberstamping” 
of prosecutors’ proposed orders is common in Harris County, particularly in 
cases in which the judge was a former county prosecutor. But Feeney’s case 
stood out even more in that Judge Magee provided his lawyers no opportunity to 
respond to the prosecution’s proposed disposition of the case. “When you have 
such egregious inattention to facts and lack of stewardship of constitutional 
rights as we’ve seen in Harris County,” Balko said, “the entire system begins 
to look like a farce.”

Under AEDPA, rubberstamped findings are routinely treated with the same level 
of deference as findings that judges wrote themselves. Balko explains that, 
“under the controlling case law for the [Texas federal courts], ‘a full and 
fair hearing is not a precondition to presumption of correctness to state 
habeas court findings of fact.’” “The message sent to state judges by the Fifth 
Circuit in Mr. Freeney’s case was clear,” says Richard Bourke, one of Freeney’s 
attorneys. “You don’t need to consider the defense’s legal arguments. You don’t 
need to consider the defense’s evidence. You don’t even need to wait until the 
defense has presented either. You can just rubber stamp the state’s brief. And 
you needn’t worry about the Fifth Circuit overruling you.”

Rubberstamping “isn’t even all that uncommon. In some parts of the country, 
it’s routine,” Balko said. In several 2016 articles for The Marshall Project, 
Andrew Cohen noted court decisions “ghostwritten” by prosecutors in Alabama, 
Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Texas. On 
May 16, 2018, Texas executed Juan Castillo after a Bexar County judge denied 
him an evidentiary hearing on his claim that prosecutors had presented false 
testimony to secure his conviction. The judge adopted the prosecution's 
proposed findings and order verbatim—changing only the signature line on the 
order—without permitting Castillo’s lawyers to submit proposed findings or to 
respond to the prosecution’s submission. Alabama attempted to execute Doyle 
Hamm in February 2018 after state courts had adopted word-for-word an 89-page 
order written by the state attorney general’s office one business day after 
receiving the prosecution’s proposed order, without removing the word 
“proposed” from the title of the order.

(source: Death Penalty Information Center)








NEW HAMPSHIRE:

Save the death penalty

The legislature should sustain Governor Sununu’s veto of the death penalty 
repeal bill (HB 455).

Our death penalty is made for murderers like Carl Drega, who in 1997 killed two 
state troopers, a district court judge and a newspaper editor in the North 
Country. He also shot and wounded four more police officers before he killed 
himself.

That is the type of case that our narrow death penalty law covers because 
someone that evil, had he lived, deserves the ultimate punishment for what he 
intentionally did to those four families.

Corrections officers and police will be endangered by repeal.

Many conservative House and Senate members are being snookered by the liberals 
into believing that if you are pro-life, you cannot be for the death penalty. 
Do not be fooled by people who believe tearing apart an unborn child at 8 
months of pregnancy does not take human life.

Remember an unborn child has no ability to speak for him or herself. On the 
other hand, an adult like Carl Drega, who chooses to hate the government and 
hate police officers (because they represent the government) should, after a 
due process trial, receive the death penalty. Being pro-life for the unborn and 
executing adult evil people like Drega or Himmler are not inconsistent 
positions.

Obviously, the death penalty will never deter 100 %, but its repeal takes off 
the table a key bargaining chip in dealing with murderers. Now all that would 
be left is a life sentence or one without parole, but you will not get the same 
plea bargains as you would get if you also had the option, in the right case, 
to consider capital punishment.

Finally, I would point out that 4 years ago Connecticut repealed the death 
penalty prospectively. However, the Connecticut Supreme Court held that because 
“no state or nation has ever executed someone after a prospective only repeal,” 
they would join that unanimous position and let everyone on death row off the 
hook in Connecticut.

That is what can happen in New Hampshire.

Why should the legislature reduce Michael Addison’s just punishment after a 
trial prosecuted by Kelly Ayotte as attorney general and the decisions of a 
unanimous jury and the New Hampshire Supreme Court?

(source: Letter to the Editor; Chuck Douglas is a former Supreme Court Justice 
and congressman who practices law in Concord----The Union Leader)

********************

Votes falling into place to override Sununu veto of death penalty 
repeal----Some GOP support for repeal slipping

All eyes will be on the State House later this week as reps are expected to 
vote to override the governor's veto of a bill to end capital punishment in New 
Hampshire.

"I think a lot of these bills, especially on death penalty, people on both 
sides are very anxious to see what the outcome will be, and I see no need of 
putting that off,” Rep. Steve Shurtleff, D-House Speaker, said.

When the House voted to repeal the death penalty in March, it did so with a 
279-88 bipartisan majority, clearing the two-thirds threshold needed to 
override a veto.

“And we had quite a few people out that day. I know folks on the other side of 
the aisle. The Republican leadership and the governor's office is whipping 
Republicans to change their vote, but I hope they'll truly make this a vote of 
conscience,” Shurtleff said.

In a statement to WMUR, Gov. Chris Sununu said, "I have had conversations with 
lawmakers as the legislative process moves forward and appreciate that there 
are strong feelings on both sides of this issue. I hope the Legislature will 
stand with law enforcement, families of crime victims and advocates for justice 
in sustaining my veto.”

That message is sinking in with some House Republicans, who are reconsidering 
the votes they cast in favor of repeal.

"It's my understanding that it's starting to become politicized. We're getting 
word that Democrats are forcing the issue to make sure that veto gets 
overridden,” Rep. Patrick Abrami, R-Stratham, said.

Abrami said there are intense behind-the-scenes lobbying efforts on this bill, 
but he said, at least among Republicans, the governor and House leaders have 
been convincing, while the other side has come off as heavy-handed.

"It's unfortunate that's happening, so this is leading me to think maybe I'll 
change my vote to support the governor on this," Abrami said.

How many will follow him remains to be seen.

The vote will be held later this week.

(source: WMUR news)








PENNSYLVANIA:

Sen. Toomey Reintroduces Legislation That Would Increase Chances Of Death 
Penalty For Convicted Cop Killers In Pennsylvania



Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey says he is hoping to pass the Thin Blue Line Act. 
Toomey and law enforcement leaders discussed the legislation in Northeast 
Philadelphia on Monday.

It would make the death penalty more likely for someone convicted of murdering 
a state or local police officer.

The bill passed the House in 2017, but never got a vote in the Senate. Toomey 
is now reintroducing the bill.

“It’s about the criminal that would actually single out and kill a law 
enforcement officer. That is the most dangerous type of person in our society 
and that’s why this is an appropriate response,” Toomey said.

Some civil rights groups oppose the legislation.

(source: CBS News)








SOUTH CAROLINA:

Prison guard: Tim Jones killed his daughter after she saw him killing his son



A S.C. prison guard testified Tuesday that confessed child killer Tim Jones 
said he killed his 8-year-old daughter after she walked into a bedroom in the 
family’s home and discovered him strangling one of her brothers to death.

Jones told the guard, Lt. Travis Pressley, that he then grabbed his daughter, 
Merah, and “choked her ‘til she turned purple,” Pressley testified on Tuesday, 
the sixth day of Jones’ death penalty trial in the Lexington County courthouse. 
He is charged with killing his five children: Merah, Elias, 7; Nahtahn, 6, 
Gabriel, 2 and Abigail Elaine, 1.

Pressley did not name the daughter during his testimony, but Jones’ oldest 
child was Merah, 8. His only other daughter, 1-year-old Abigail Elaine, would 
not have likely been walking around on the night of Aug. 28, 2014, when Jones 
killed his 5 children in his Red Bank mobile home.

“He said that when he saw the daughter, she was shocked — and I guess, I don’t 
know, she tried to run away or what — he grabbed her and choked her so hard 
...” testified Pressley, who works at Kirkland Correctional Institution in 
Columbia.

Jones, 37, a divorced Christian fundamentalist with strict ideas on marriage 
and child-rearing, has already admitted to killing his five children in a taped 
confession played last week to the jury and now faces the death penalty.

Pressley’s testimony on Tuesday seemingly contains new assertions — that 
Nahtahn was strangled to death instead of accidentally dying from excessive 
exercise and that Merah walked in on one of the murders, which triggered her 
killing.

In that confession, made Sept. 9, 2014, three days after Jones’s arrest in 
Mississippi, Jones admitted to an FBI agent and a Lexington County detective 
that he killed five children. But he didn’t say he killed Merah after she 
interrupted her brother’s killing.

Instead, Jones said that after finding son Nahtahn, 6, unexpectedly dead in his 
bed, he methodically went about killing his other four children by strangling 
them in their beds.

Pressley’s testimony did not name the child Jones was purportedly strangling 
when Merah walked in. Pressley began by saying that Jones was upset at one son 
whom he thought had tampered with the homes’ electrical outlets and quoted 
Jones as saying he had killed that son by choking him with a belt because his 
(Jones’) hands were too large to get around the little boy’s neck.

However, in the confession aired last week, Jones denied strangling Nahtahn 
with or without a belt, claiming instead he found Nahtahn dead in his bed after 
making him do strenuous PT (physical training). In the confession, Jones 
admitted choking the two youngest children to death with a belt because their 
necks were too small for his “big hands” to get a strangling grip on them.

On Monday, pathologist Janice Ross testified that Nahtahn could have died by 
dehydration after so much PT but death from strangulation was also possible. 
She examined the body more than a week after he had been killed and was unable 
to make a firm finding other than that he, like all the children, had died from 
“homicidal violence.”

Also testifying Monday was another prison guard, Ben Boyd, whose testimony 
supported a version of events where Jones was strangling Nahtahn when Merah 
walked in.

Boyd testified he heard Jones say that “his son was just messing with the light 
socket and he grabbed him and he choked him ... then he said while he was 
choking his son, his daughter came in the room, and that was the last part I 
heard.”

However, both guards acknowledged they were not conducting formal interviews 
with Jones at the time, a lot was going on in the prison around them and their 
written accounts of the incident were done more 30 minutes later from memory.

Jones interacted with the prison guards on Sept. 12, 2014, after being brought 
back from Mississippi to South Carolina. Officials didn’t want to keep Jones in 
the Lexington County jail, so they transferred him to Kirkland Correctional 
Institution, the state’s “Supermax” highest security “prison within a prison” 
facility on Broad River Road in Columbia.

When Jones came in to the Supermax, manacled and beginning to be processed for 
his prison stay, he began crying and said he was sorry, Pressley testified. “I 
guess reality kicked in to where he knows where he is.”

The day’s last prosecution witness, Lexington County sheriff’s department 
digital forensics expert Michael Phipps testified about the contents of Jones’s 
cell phone in the form of web searches, texts and phone calls.

Phipps, the prosecution’s 32nd witness so far, testified that on the 8 days on 
and after Aug. 28, 2014, the day he killed the children, Jones received dozens 
and dozens of messages and calls from his ex-wife Amber Kyzer, relatives, 
babysitters, staff members at the children’s school, Saxe Gotha Elementary, and 
Jones’ boss at Intel, asking where he was and entreating him to get in touch. 
He responded to only a few.

(source: thestate.com)








FLORIDA----impending execution

Florida Catholic Conference asks governor to halt execution of serial killer



The Catholic bishops of Florida are calling on the state’s governor to spare 
the life of Bobby Joe Long, a convicted serial killer who is scheduled to be 
executed on Thursday.

“Although [Long] caused much harm, society has been safe from his aggressive 
acts in the decades of his incarceration. Without taking his life, society can 
be protected while he endures the alternative sentence of life without the 
possibility of parole,” said Michael Sheedy, executive director of the Florida 
Catholic Conference, in a May 20 letter to Governor Ron DeSantis.

Long has been on death row since 1985 and is scheduled to die by lethal 
injection on May 23.

He pleaded guilty to killing eight women in and near Tampa Bay during an 
8-month span in 1984. He also claimed to have raped dozens of women.

Long’s lawyer has argued that the 65 year old is mentally ill and suffers from 
epilepsy, which could lead to him having a seizure when the lethal injection 
drugs are administered. The lawyer said that Long is constitutionally 
ineligible for the death penalty.

The Florida Supreme Court recently denied Long’s appeal on procedural grounds.

On behalf of the state’s bishops, Sheedy asked the governor to consider 
commuting the sentence to life without parole.

“Floridians around the state are gathering in prayer for all who have been 
harmed by Mr. Long’s actions, for him, and for an end to the use of the death 
penalty. We also pray for you as you consider this request,” he said.

Sheedy acknowledged the heinous nature of Long’s crimes but said that capital 
punishment will not further public safety.

Since Long was sentenced, Sheedy said, modern medicine has gained a greater 
understanding of brain trauma and its effects on behavior. He highlighted the 
history of Long’s brain injuries.

“His attorneys have filed briefs that call attention to the multiple traumas he 
experienced throughout his life, including the motorcycle accident he suffered 
in 1974. That incident profoundly affected him and his behaviors. It 
contributed to his receiving a disability rating from the military, from which 
he was honorably discharged,” said Sheedy.

Even without these mitigating circumstances, the Florida Catholic Conference 
would still oppose the death penalty for Long, he said, pointing to a change in 
the Catehcism of the Catholic Church last year to hold the death penalty as 
inadmissible.

“The death penalty is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person 
and denies the possibility of redemption,” Sheedy said.

“Please promote a consistent pro-life ethic in our state. The cycle of violence 
– to which Mr. Long’s acts have contributed – must end. His execution would 
only perpetuate it.”

(source: Catholic News Agency)

*******************

Death penalty opponents call on DeSantis to stop execution



Death penalty opponents are calling on Gov. Ron DeSantis to stop the execution 
of serial killer on death row.

Bobby Joe Long is scheduled to be executed Thursday at Florida State Prison for 
the 1984 murder of Michelle Simms in Hillsborough County.

In 1985, Long pleaded guilty to seven additional 1st-degree murder charges and 
numerous charges for sexual batteries and kidnappings in the Tampa Bay Area.

Long’s attorney has filed appeals to try to block the execution, a process that 
likely will continue leading up to Thursday.

If given a lethal injection, he would be the 1st death row inmate executed 
since Gov. DeSantis took office in January.

Death penalty opponents want DeSantis to stop the execution, saying capital 
punishment is not a deterrent to crime.

“Once you cross a threshold, it can be tough to go back from," Michael Sheedy 
of the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops. "We believe that he does 
recognize the really serious nature of this. We are hopeful, again, that he 
will stay this execution.”

28 inmates were executed under the watch of former governor, Rick Scott during 
his 8 years in office, the most of any Florida governor since the death penalty 
was reinstated in 1976.

There are currently 338 men, and 3 women on death row in Florida.

(source: WWSB news)

********************

Bobby Joe Long is why the death penalty exists



Some of 341 people on Florida’s death row may be innocent. Bobby Joe Long is 
not.

Lawmakers created the death penalty for monsters like Bobby Joe Long. That’s 
true whether you believe in capital punishment or not.

During the early 1980s, he murdered at least 8 women in Tampa, but only after 
torturing and assaulting each one. He dumped their bodies and then went looking 
for more victims. His appetite for violence was insatiable.

Long himself estimated he raped at least 40 women, many of them under-aged 
girls.

He has been on Florida’s death row since 1985, longer than anyone currently 
there. Barring a late reprieve, that will come to an end around 6 p.m. Thursday 
when he faces lethal injection. It is the first death warrant signed by Gov. 
Ron DeSantis.

Well, if anyone must be the first, Long is the best candidate.

Long caused unspeakable terror during his murderous rampage through the Tampa 
area. He was in the Ted Bundy class of killers, a predator who stalked women to 
satisfy his own twisted need.

Will anyone grieve when Long finally is gone for good?

Oh, probably. Death penalty opponents argue that murder is murder, whether done 
by the criminal or the state. There is religious opposition to capital 
punishment. Some argue that the drugs used to execute the condemned are 
inhumane. They say locking people like Long up forever, never letting them out, 
would be justice.

There also will be those who cheer Long’s departure from the living. That’s how 
it was when Bundy had his date with the electric chair. That was unseemly, even 
considering what Bundy had done.

And, there is the fact that Florida gets it wrong a lot.

There have been 165 such cases nationwide since 1973.

Florida leads that list with 29 individuals wrongly sentenced to death, 
according to deathpenaltyinfo.org. The latest reversal was Clifford Williams in 
March, 42 years after his conviction for a murder he didn’t commit.

There is no doubt about Bobby Joe Long, though.

None.

He received the death penalty for the murder of 22-year-old Michelle Simms. Law 
enforcement linked him to at least 8 other murders.

His offender page on the state Department of Corrections website is 
jaw-dropping in its horror.

He has 4 99-year sentences for robbery, kidnapping, and other crimes. Long 
received 30 life sentences – 30!

The only way Long was ever going to leave prison was in the back of a hearse, 
either by natural causes or something else.

Do we need the death penalty, or would it be enough to know a sociopath like 
Long was never going to walk free?

We can debate that all day. If Florida abolished capital punishment, I would be 
fine with that. Killing Bobby Joe Long won’t bring back his victims.

But if seeing the life leave his body gives comfort to any of those people 
affected by his rampages, I’m fine with that too.

This state likes to sentence people to death, that’s for sure. In Florida, 338 
men and 3 women await their date with the needle. There is a good chance some 
of them are innocent.

Bobby Joe Long is not one of them.

(source: Opinion, Joe Henderson; Florida Politics)








ALABAMA:

Non-Christian death row inmates want their own spiritual advisers at executions



When Michael Brandon Samra was executed at Holman prison in Atmore May 16, his 
last words were a prayer but no spiritual adviser was present in the chamber.

Samra’s spiritual adviser observed Samra’s death from a witness room, a change 
in protocol resulting from two recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions involving 
prison chaplains, executions and religious freedom. The cases involved two 
death row inmates — one in Alabama, the other in Texas — both of whom turned to 
the Supreme Court with requests to stay their executions until the states 
agreed to allow a spiritual adviser of each inmate’s own faith to accompany him 
to the death chamber.

Stay of execution

In Alabama, the inmate was Muslim. Domineque Ray was scheduled to die by lethal 
injection for the 1995 rape and murder of Selma teenager Tiffany Harville. His 
request to have his imam by his side ran afoul of the state prison system’s 
protocol that, in effect, required a Christian chaplain in the death chamber. 
Although they must work with a wide variety of faiths on a daily basis, all of 
the chaplains employed by the Alabama Department of Corrections are Christian.

The state’s execution protocol required a state-employed chaplain to be present 
in the death chamber but did not allow non-employees such as Ray’s imam to be 
present.

Claiming that his constitutional rights to freedom of religion were being 
violated, Ray was granted a stay of execution by the U.S. Court of Appeals for 
the 11th Circuit, which ruled unanimously that “it looks substantially likely 
to us that Alabama has run afoul of the Establishment Clause of the First 
Amendment.”

The 3-judge panel went on to say, “The central constitutional problem here is 
that the state has regularly placed a Christian cleric in the execution room to 
minister to the needs of Christian inmates but has refused to provide the same 
benefit to a devout Muslim and all other non-Christians.”

Ray’s Feb. 6 victory was short-lived, the stay of execution overturned the very 
next day by the U.S. Supreme Court on a 5–4 vote. The court sidestepped ruling 
on the constitutionality of the protocol, however, deciding on Feb. 7 that Ray 
had not challenged the protocol in a timely enough manner. Ray, 42, was 
executed that same night with his imam watching from the viewing room and, in a 
concession by the state, no Christian chaplain present in the death chamber.

Criticism came swiftly and strongly from both the political left and right, as 
liberal law professors and conservative commentators alike proclaimed the 
decision a grave violation of the First Amendment. “Ray’s execution was just. 
The circumstances were not,” wrote David French in National Review. “The 
state’s obligation is to protect and facilitate the free exercise of a person’s 
faith, not to seek reasons to deny him consolation at the moment of his death.”

Different decision

Apparently stung by the criticism coming from all sides, the Supreme Court came 
to a very different decision in a very similar case just seven weeks later.

This time, the condemned man was Patrick Henry Murphy Jr., 57, a Buddhist in 
Texas.

Murphy was scheduled to die the evening of March 28 for his part in a 7-man 
prison escape followed by multiple robberies and the killing of 31-year-old 
Dallas police officer Aubrey Hawkins. By a 7–2 vote, the Supreme Court granted 
an eleventh-hour stay of Murphy’s execution because Texas would not allow his 
Buddhist spiritual adviser to be at his side.

Like Alabama, Texas prison officials would allow only a state-employed chaplain 
to be in the death chamber. Both Christian and Muslim chaplains were available, 
but not Buddhist.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who voted with the majority to overturn Ray’s stay of 
execution in Alabama due to the timing of his appeal, indicated that his 
support for Murphy’s stay was about freedom of religion. “As this Court has 
repeatedly held,” Kavanaugh wrote, “governmental discrimination against 
religion — in particular, discrimination against religious persons, religious 
organizations, and religious speech — violates the Constitution.”

Texas responded to the Supreme Court decision a week later by changing its 
policies to no longer allow any chaplain at all in the death chamber but 
allowing the condemned inmate to designate a spiritual adviser who may be 
present only in the witness room.

However, since the Supreme Court decision specifically called for allowing 
Murphy’s Buddhist spiritual adviser to actually accompany him in the death 
chamber, Murphy’s execution remains on hold.

Samra’s was the 1st execution in Alabama since the Court ruling in the Texas 
case. Previously ADOC said its policy on chaplains in the death chamber was 
under review.

Following the Supreme Court decision in March, Stanford law professor James A. 
Sonne, founding director of Stanford Law School’s Religious Liberty Clinic, 
said most of the 30 states in which the death penalty is legal allow a chaplain 
of the inmate’s choice to be present at the execution, though that doesn’t 
necessarily mean in the death chamber.

(source: The Alabama Baptist)








LOUISIANA:

Strict secrecy for suppliers of execution drugs passes Louisiana House; bid to 
restart death penalty now heads to Senate



A bid to shield potential suppliers of execution drugs to Louisiana prisons 
behind a wall of secrecy easily cleared the Louisiana House despite objections 
from some death penalty opponents.

Drug manufacturers, pharmacists, suppliers and other involved in providing the 
state lethal drugs for executions would be granted strict confidentiality under 
House Bill 258, which would exempt contracts and other documents that might 
identify those companies or people from public scrutiny or disclosure in court 
proceedings.

State representatives voted in favor of the measure, 68-31. It now moves to the 
state Senate.

Backers, including the bill’s author, Hammond Republican Rep. Nicholas 
Muscarello, framed it as a way to jumpstart Louisiana’s stalled executions and 
carry out punishments promised to families of victims when juries sentenced 
convicted murderers to death.

Louisiana has carried just three death sentences over the past two decades, 
with the last execution coming in 2010. State prison officials said they’ve 
struggled to obtain the deadly cocktail needed for lethal injections, the only 
method of execution allowed under Louisiana law.

Records obtained by The Advocate through a public records request show the 
state’s most recent supply of any of the drugs used in executions had expired 
by 2016.

Large drugmakers that manufacture the compounds used in lethal injections have 
refused to sell it to states for executions and taken steps in recent years to 
block the delivery of their products prison systems for that purpose.

Muscarello said cloaking the source of execution drugs in secrecy might allow 
prison officials to tap so-called compounding pharmacies — small operations 
which custom-mix pharmaceuticals — to supply execution drugs.

Those pharmacies, Muscarello said, may be reluctant to sell to Louisiana out of 
fear of scrutiny and protest if their role in the death penalty were made 
public.

“I’m trying to bring a solution to a problem that currently exists and I think 
it’s a valid solution,” Muscarello said, pointing to neighboring Texas, which 
has similar secrecy laws and has recently carried out executions.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards indicated in an April interview with The 
Times-Picayune that he'd be inclined to sign the bill if passed by both 
chambers of the Legislature.

"I would suspect that if it comes to my desk I won’t have a problem with it, 
but I always reserve the right to look at it because (bills) typically get 
amended, they get changed and that sort of thing," Edwards said.

Critics have argued the bill amounts to an attack on transparency and open 
government by hiding the details of one of the state’s most controversial acts 
from public scrutiny.

Death penalty opponents also questioned whether the bill would be effective — 
and whether easing acquisition of execution drugs amounted to good public 
policy.

Rep. Terry Landry, a New Iberia Democrat who’s fought to end the death penalty 
in Louisiana, said Muscarello’s bill would send the state “heading in the wrong 
direction.”

“I think we ought to be doing everything we can to protect life,” Landry said.

(source: The Advocate)