[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.C., FLA., ARK., KY., NEB.

[Rick Halperin]

June 27


TEXAS----impending execution

Condemned killer wants to die by firing squad or gas



Attorneys for a 66-year-old Texas death row inmate say his health problems make 
him unsuitable for lethal injection scheduled for this week, so they're 
proposing he be rolled in his wheelchair in front of a firing squad or be 
administered nitrogen gas to cut off oxygen to his brain until he stops 
breathing.

If the state doesn't accept 1 of their alternatives, lawyers for confessed 
multiple killer and rapist Danny Paul Bible contend his lethal injection, set 
for Wednesday evening, should be halted because it would be unconstitutionally 
cruel and present a "substantial risk" of being botched due to his "unique 
constellation of medical issues."

The 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals was considering the appeal Tuesday. A 
federal judge in Houston last week rejected it.

State attorneys argued the civil rights lawsuit was a "meritless tactic' to 
delay his "well-deserved execution." Neither firing squad nor nitrogen gas are 
legal execution methods in Texas and the state Legislature isn't scheduled to 
meet again until next year. A handful of death penalty states allow nitrogen 
hypoxia, although the method hasn't been used. 3 Utah inmates have been 
executed by firing squad, the most recent in 2010. Utah now allows that method 
if drugs for execution are unavailable.

No one is disputing Bible's guilt in a Houston slaying nearly 40 years ago that 
went unsolved for 2 decades before a jury convicted him of it and sent him to 
Texas death row.

Bible, a drifter with a record of violence in several states, would be the 7th 
convicted killer executed this year in Texas, equaling the state's total for 
all of 2017. He'd be the nation's 12th prisoner executed this year.

Bible's lawyers sought a reprieve, a restraining order and an injunction to 
block his execution, arguing Bible had no suitable sites on his body for IVs to 
deliver a lethal dose of the sedative pentobarbital and that severe tremors 
accompanying his Parkinson's disease would complicate insertion of IV needles. 
They also warned of a problematic execution like ones in recent years in Ohio 
and Alabama.

Stephen Hoffman, an assistant Texas attorney general opposing the lawsuit, said 
the court "should give little consideration to isolated examples of problematic 
executions in other states when it has numerous uneventful Texas executions 
upon which to base its opinion." Texas has carried out 551 executions since 
1982, tops in the nation.

Hoffman pointed out IVs have successfully been used to draw blood from Bible as 
part of his medical care.

Bible was tracked down in 1999 and arrested in Fort Myers, Florida, for a 
Louisiana rape. He asked detectives in West Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for a Bible 
and a pack of cigarettes and began talking, acknowledging 4 killings, including 
a 4-month-old boy, and at least 9 rapes. 5 rapes were northeast of Houston in 
San Jacinto County.

The 4 slayings included 20-year-old Inez Deaton, whose 1979 killing in Houston 
went unsolved for nearly 2 decades. Deaton, found on the banks of a Houston 
bayou, had been raped and fatally stabbed with an ice pick and was a friend of 
Bible's cousin. A jury that convicted him in 2003 of Deaton's slaying decided 
he should die.

The 3 other killings, all west of Fort Worth on the same day in May 1983, 
included Bible's sister-in-law Tracy Powers and her 4-month-old son, Justin,

(source: Associated Press)

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

In America's leading death-penalty county, judges routinely outsource their 
written opinions to prosecutors



There are a few enduring and pernicious myths about the death penalty in the 
United States. One is that execution is reserved for the "worst of the worst," 
only the most culpable and only those for which there is overwhelming evidence 
of guilt. We now know that this isn't true. When it comes to culpability, for 
example, we've executed people who were mentally ill, who didn't directly 
commit the murder for which they were convicted or who were the unlucky person 
against whom co-conspirators testified in exchange for a plea bargain. As of 
last month, the United States had executed 1,476 since 1976. Meanwhile, 162 
death row inmates have been exonerated. Which is to say that of every 9 people 
we've executed, a fellow death row inmate was wrongly convicted. In most cases, 
it took DNA testing to prevent the execution. In other words, we don't merely 
execute those for whom there is overwhelming evidence of guilt.

Another misperception that goes hand in hand with this one is that the 
criminal-justice system takes these cases very seriously. As former Supreme 
Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote in a 1993 opinion, "Our society has a 
high degree of confidence in its criminal trials, in no small part because the 
Constitution offers unparalleled protections against convicting the innocent." 
(To be fair, O'Connor has since changed her mind a bit.) It's easy to see why 
people would assume as much. Given the stakes, one can only hope that 
prosecutors exercise great care and caution in seeking capital cases; that 
death-penalty defendants are afforded quality legal defense as well as funds to 
hire their own investigators and expert witnesses; and that judges bend over 
backward to be impartial, to ensure that these trials are fair, and to give 
defendants the benefit of any doubts. We want to think that appeals courts 
carefully review these cases and hold trial judges, prosecutors and even juries 
to the highest standards.

Of course, we know this isn't true, either. We know that attorneys for 
death-penalty defendants have shown up at court drunk. We know they've been 
caught sleeping during trials. We know that judges have assigned capital cases 
to attorneys with little or no experience, or with long disciplinary records. 
We know that prosecutors routinely hide exculpatory evidence. And we know that 
appeals courts are woefully bad at oversight. Moreover, we know that, thanks to 
Congress, federal appeals courts routinely rule against capital defendants 
based on procedural issues, not on substantive matters such as guilt or 
innocence, justice, or whether their convictions were constitutional. 
Tellingly, a 2008 study of the 1st 200 DNA exonerations by University of 
Virginia law professor Brandon Garrett found that in 86 % of those cases, the 
defendant never received any appellate relief before DNA testing. In 1/3 of the 
cases, appeals courts dismissed the errors committed by prosecutors, judges or 
defense attorneys before or during the trial as "harmless," then cited the 
other evidence of guilt in upholding the conviction. In more than 10 % of 
cases, at least one appeals court majority described the evidence of the 
defendant's guilt as "overwhelming." (Remember that all of these people were 
proven innocent by DNA testing.

All of which brings me to a study of death-penalty cases in Harris County, 
Tex., recently published in the Houston Law Review. (Thanks to the Open File 
blog for pointing the study out.)

Specifically, the study looked at how Texas's trial courts handled 
post-conviction review of these cases. The term "post-conviction" refers to the 
period after a defendant has exhausted his or her initial appeal. The bar for a 
new trial during post-conviction is much higher. But in most states, it's only 
during post-conviction that defense attorneys will get access to the state's 
entire file about a case. If there's exculpatory evidence that was never turned 
over before trial, it's usually at this stage that they'll find it. Recognizing 
the importance of post-conviction review, the federal courts have also required 
states to support well-funded offices of post-conviction to represent people on 
death row. These offices tend to be staffed with more experienced and qualified 
attorneys who are less overworked than the typical public defender in a capital 
case. They're also more likely to have funding to hire independent 
investigators and expert witnesses. This, too, is why we tend not to learn 
about misconduct and deficiencies in a death penalty trial until 
post-conviction. The performance of the defendant's trial attorney also often 
isn't reviewed by an independent defense attorney until the case moves to 
post-conviction.

So let???s get back to that Houston study. Once in post-conviction, a 
defendant's attorneys first file a petition with the trial judge laying out the 
new evidence. The trial judge then makes a determination of whether that new 
evidence merits a new trial. The trial judge's findings are immensely 
important. They're granted enormous deference by state appellate courts, and 
federal law requires federal appeals courts to grant enormous deference to the 
states.

Given all of this, we should hope that Texas's courts treat post-conviction 
petitions from people on death row with a great amount of reverence and care. 
The study found that this just isn't the case. The authors found so many 
problems, in fact, that they argue it raises questions about whether the 
state's habeas process "is genuinely adversarial." The study found that in an 
"overwhelming number" of cases, the trial courts didn't bother holding an 
evidentiary hearing to resolve any discrepancies in facts between the state and 
the defense. They found that the courts showed "extreme deference" to the 
prosecution, and often adopted the state's position on every single claim, even 
when contradicted by the record. For example, the study found 191 cases in 
which a defendant's post-conviction petition alleged clear disputes of fact 
with the state.

In these cases, Harris County post-conviction prosecutors have authored and 
proposed 21,275 separate findings of fact and conclusions of law, and the 
Harris County courts have adopted 20,261 of the prosecutors' proposed findings 
verbatim: an adoption rate of 95 %. In fact, judges in Harris County have 
adopted all of the prosecutors' findings verbatim in 183 out of 191 sets of 
findings, or 96 %.

So in 96 % of these cases, the judge sided with the state on every single case. 
And if you tally up all the disputed facts in all 191 cases - the courts sided 
with prosecutors on 95 % of them.

Some other findings from the Texas study:

Of 40 state judges for which the authors could obtain reliable data, 34 (85 %) 
"in every instance . . . adopted every single finding of fact and conclusion of 
law proposed by the state verbatim."

At least 8 courts in Harris County have accepted the state's version of every 
disputed fact verbatim in every death penalty case since 1995. Note that the 
point here isn't that these courts sided with the state in every death penalty 
appeal. It's that for every disputed fact of every death penalty case, they 
accepted the state's version, word for word.

Here's the most jaw-dropping part: In 167 of the 191 cases, "the judges simply 
signed the state's proposed document without changing the heading." Which is to 
say, the judges essentially let the prosecutors write their opinion for them.

Moreover, there's little evidence that the judges even read these opinions 
before signing their name to them. From the study:

Where the state does file an unsigned copy with the court, the intervals 
between filing and signing of the state's proposed findings are often very 
brief (sometimes within a single day), even in cases with over a hundred 
proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law involving extensive factual 
disputes. Buried in the original district clerk's files are handwritten notes, 
some on yellow Post-its, evidencing ex parte communications between 
post-conviction prosecutors and the presiding judges. Misspellings, 
misnumberings, and other typographical errors are present throughout 
rubber-stamped orders, suggesting that the court had not reviewed the document 
before signing and adopting the state-authored findings in their entirety.

Even when judges did more than merely sign their names, their changes to the 
prosecutors' briefs were often perfunctory, such as changing a heading or 
changing the order of the findings. Below the headings, the legal arguments 
were word for word. The authors of the study concluded that of the 185 written 
opinions in which a Harris County court judge denied a post-conviction 
petition, the judge had actually written his or her own opinion in just two. 
That amounts to 2 %.

It isn't the 1st time we've seen this. Back in 2016, I wrote about Alabama 
death row inmate Doyle Lee Hamm. The man's attorneys had requested a new 
sentencing hearing after presenting new evidence of mitigating factors that his 
trial attorney had failed to discover. In response, prosecutors filed an 
89-page "Proposed Memorandum Opinion." 1 business day later, the judge issue 
his ruling. The opinion was merely a reproduction of the prosecutor's document, 
only with the judge's signature. The judge hadn't even bothered to delete the 
word proposed. Hamm's conviction and sentence stood. (Last February, Hamm's 
execution was called off after prison officials spent more than 2 1/2 hours 
trying to execute him. Hamm's advanced cancer and years of drug use had made it 
impossible for them to find a usable vein for the lethal injection cocktail. 
The state has since agreed to not try to attempt to execute him again.)

As Andrew Cohen reported at the Marshall Project in 2016, in Alabama too, this 
practice of judges putting their names on opinions written by prosecutors was 
common. According to a 2003 study, prosecutors had written at least 1 judicial 
opinion in 17 of 20 recent death penalty cases.

At risk of stating the obvious, that these judges can't even bother to write 
original opinions in death penalty cases is a pretty good indication that they 
didn't spend much time contemplating the arguments and issues at stake. Most of 
us were taught in grade school that it's wrong to put your name on someone 
else's work. Even if the person whose work you're claiming doesn't mind, it 
means you didn't bother doing the work yourself. This remains true through high 
school and college, where claiming someone else's work as your own is, of 
course, called plagiarism. It's a cardinal sin in journalism and academia.

Of course, plagiarism is usually committed without the consent of the 
plagiarized, but even if an original author has for some reason agreed to let 
someone else falsely claim credit for his or her work, we don't let the 
plagiarizer off the hook. Again, it isn't just about stealing work. It's about 
about falsely claiming to have intellectually engaged with the material.

This assurance that the person whose name is on the work has done the 
intellectual heavy lifting is especially important in court cases because 
again, a trial judge's findings on disputed facts are given enormous deference 
by the appellate courts. They assume these opinions were written after careful 
analysis and thoughtful consideration - or at least they pretend to.

Here's 1 more kicker: Want to guess what county has executed more people since 
1976 than any other county in the United States?

Yes. It's Harris County, Tex. The county was also featured in a recent report 
by the Fair Punishment Project for its high proportion of death-penalty cases 
with prosecutorial misconduct, its inadequate public defense in capital cases 
and the disproportionately high percentage of people of color sent to death 
row. It's the county where a former district attorney - whose office sent 40 
people to death row - had to resign after he was caught sending racist jokes 
over email. It's the county where defense lawyers have notoriously fallen 
asleep during death-penalty trials. One single defense attorney has, by 
himself, handled 20 % of the county's death penalty cases since 2006. Since 
1975, 3 people condemned to die in Harris County were later exonerated. That 
includes the recent exoneration of Alfred Dewayne Brown, who was indicted and 
convicted after the foreman of a grand jury - who was also a police officer - 
threatened Brown's alibi witness with criminal charges and the loss of her 
children until she changed her testimony. Brown was later exonerated when phone 
records confirming his alibi were found in the garage of a police officer.

This is the system that the county's judges continued to defend and rule in 
favor of, usually without bothering to take the time to write their own 
opinions.

In the end, it seems that signing your name to someone else's work is frowned 
upon in most every intellectual arena except for judicial opinions, in which 
someone's life or freedom is at stake. And that says quite a bit about how 
seriously we take the death penalty in the United States.

(source: Opinion, Radley Balko, Washington Post)

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

Death penalty sought against inmate in Texas CO's slaying----Dillon Gage 
Compton is charged in the 2016 slaying of Officer Marianne Johnson



Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against an inmate charged with 
killing a corrections officer at a Texas prison.

State prosecutors made it known they were seeking the death penalty against 
21-year-old Dillion Gage Compton in a pre-trial hearing Friday, KTAB reported. 
Compton will stand trial in the 2016 slaying of Officer Marianne Johnson.

On July 16, 2016, Johnson was found unresponsive in the kitchen area of the 
French Robertson Unit. Compton, who was assigned to the kitchen area in the 
prison, is accused of attacking Johnson when she entered the kitchen's storage 
area.

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice said Compton was serving time at the 
prison for aggravated sexual assault of a child under the age of 14 at the time 
of the attack. He is currently being held at in maximum security at an 
undisclosed location.

Compton's trial will begin on August 13 and could take weeks to complete due to 
the high-profile nature of the crime.

(source: correctionsone.com)

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

Death row inmate loses appeal



The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to review a Texas Court of Criminal Appeals 
ruling refusing DNA testing of additinal evidence in the lengthy case of a man 
condemned for the rape-slaying of a Central Texas woman.

Attorneys for 50-year-old prisoner Rodney Reed sought the new testing on items 
investigators collected related to the 1996 abduction, rape and strangling of 
19-year-old Stacy Stites. Her body was found off the side of a road about 35 
miles southeast of Austin.

The high court's refusal, without comment Monday, upholds the Texas court's 
April 2017 decision that also said Reed's lawyers were intending to 
"unreasonably delay" his execution.

(source: Associated Press)








NORTH CAROLINA:

Death penalty sought for trio charged in 2017 double murder



The state intends to seek the death penalty against 3 people charged in a 
double killing last summer, according to the Harnett County District Attorney's 
Office.

During a hearing Monday in Harnett County Supeior Court, Judge Winston 
Gilchrist ruled the state could proceed with capital murder cases against 
Gregory Recardo Fargas, 25, of Lillington; Tracey Nicole Read, 33, of Sanford, 
and Jadin Quincey Bailey, 20, of Lillington, in the Aug. 14, 2017 shooting 
deaths of Bryant James Rosser of Spring Lake and Kelcie Lynn Vann of Sanford.

(source: Sanford Herald)








FLORIDA:

Death penalty sought for man charged in Keystone Heights woman's murder



The State of Florida filed notice of intent Tuesday to seek the death penalty 
for Joe Arthur Turner, who is charged in the death of a 25-year-old Keystone 
Heights woman.

Turner is charged with the sexual battery and murder of Jordan Cooper. Cooper's 
body was discovered in the attic of her home more a month after she was 
reported missing by her mother.

Turner was also charged with burglarizing Cooper's Clay County home. 
Investigators said the burglary of tools from Cooper's house led them to 
evidence and Turner's arrest.

In November 2017, deputies began investigating a burglary at Cooper's home. 
Records show the stolen tools were pawned, which led them to serve an arrest 
warrant on Joe Arthur Turner's home in December.

Turner was found hiding in the attic of his home.

Also in the attic of Turner's home, deputies found a bag of women's clothing, 
some of which matched clothing missing from Cooper's home. At that point, 
detectives returned to search Cooper's attic. Her body was found that evening, 
hidden under layers of insulation.

After DNA from a bandage found in Cooper's attic was matched to Turner, he was 
charged with murder, burglary and sexual battery.

(source: WJXT news)

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

State seeks death penalty against alleged killer of Jordan Cooper



The State is seeking the death penalty against the alleged killer of Jordan 
Cooper.

Cooper was 25 when she went missing in Keystone Heights, Florida last November. 
She was later found dead in her attic in early December.

Through DNA evidence, the Clay County Sheriff's Office was able to arrest the 
suspect Joe Arthur Turner, a man who lived down the street from her.

(source: firstcoastnews.com)

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

Man who beat Boca mom to death in 1984 denied new hearing over death penalty



The killer of a 38-year-old Boca Raton woman in 1984 will remain on death row 
rather than receive a new sentencing hearing, the Florida Supreme Court ruled 
Tuesday.

But Duane Owen still has a pending case before the high court concerning yet 
another death sentence he received for the 1984 murder of a 14-year-old Delray 
Beach babysitter.

Lawyers for the 57-year-old Owen had filed claims for new hearings in both 
cases, based on 2016 U.S. Supreme Court and Florida Supreme Court decisions 
that the state's process for sentencing people to death was unconstitutional.

Under a new state law adopted last year, unanimous jury votes are now required 
to recommend death sentences.

Since 2016, lawyers representing Florida death row inmates sentenced under the 
old law have argued for new sentencing hearings.

But the Florida Supreme Court has determined that a June 24, 2002 U.S. Supreme 
Court decision should be used as a cutoff to determine which death row inmates 
may be entitled to hearings. Death sentences that became final before that date 
would not be affected.

That 2002 decision, Ring v. Arizona, held that juries, not judges, were 
required to find the aggravating factors necessary to impose capital 
punishment.

Tuesday's ruling concerns Owen's conviction and sentence for the May 28, 1984 
murder of Georgianna Worden, 38. He was found guilty of breaking into the 
single mother's home, raping her and bludgeoning her to death with a hammer.

The jury voted 10-2 to recommend the death penalty, and the trial judge handed 
down the death sentence.

Although Owen's conviction and punishment was affirmed by the state Supreme 
Court in 1992 - 10 years before the Ring cutoff date - his lawyers still argued 
for a new sentencing hearing because his jury was not unanimous for death.

The Florida Supreme Court denied Owen's challenge, citing that his sentence 
became final in 1992.

However, the court on Monday ordered attorneys for the state to submit 
arguments for why Owen should not get a hearing in the babysitter murder case.

In 1999, Owen was convicted at a retrial in the March 24, 1984 stabbing murder 
and rape of Karen Slattery; he was sentenced to death based on a 10-2 jury 
recommendation.

But that conviction and death sentence did not become final until after appeals 
ended in 2004, which is after the 2002 cutoff date.

In a May 8 ruling, Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Glenn Kelley decided that 
the lack of a unanimous jury vote for death still does not justify throwing out 
Owen's death sentence for the Slattery murder.

Kelley wrote that after considering all of the evidence, "death was the 
appropriate penalty." Owen's lawyers then quickly appealed Kelley's ruling.

Jim Driscoll, who represents Owen, declined to comment Tuesday.

(source: sun-sentinel.com)








ARKANSAS:

Arkansas death row inmates want to know where Texas gets its death drugs



A group of Arkansas death row inmates is asking Texas to name its lethal 
injection supplier, in the hope of convincing their own state to switch to a 
drug they say could be less painful, like the one used here in the Huntsville 
death chamber.

The move comes as part of a legal battle launched in early 2017, when Arkansas 
tried executing 8 men in 10 days as the state's drugs were set to expire. The 
courts intervened in a number of those cases, and the 4 men who weren't put to 
death have since fought the state's efforts to execute them using midazolam, a 
lethal injection drug repeatedly linked to "botched' executions.

Instead, the prisoners say in court filings, they'd rather be put to death the 
way it's done in Texas.

To make that happen, the condemned inmates are asking a court to force the 
Texas Department of Criminal Justice to reveal the name of their supplier - not 
publicly, but under the secrecy of a protective order.

Officials say that a Florida killer's screams of "murderers!" during his 
execution were not caused by the drugs used for the lethal injection.

The legal case is unfolding even as condemned Texas killer Danny Bible is 
challenging his own pending execution, arguing his veins are so bad he can't be 
put to death. And just like the Arkansas prisoners, Bible has offered up 
alternative ways to die.

The morbid suggestions stem from a 2015 Supreme Court decision in the case of 
Oklahoma death row prisoner Richard Glossip, which mandated that inmates 
challenging the method of their execution must find a better, readily available 
method.

"That part of the decision has been roundly criticized as inhumane and 
macabre," said Robert Dunham of the Death Penalty Information Center. "It's 
like a movie villain telling his hostage that he or she can die less painfully 
but they've got to choose the method of their own demise."

Currently, the Lone Star State uses a single drug, the barbiturate 
pentobarbital, in its executions. But Arkansas uses a 3-drug protocol, laid out 
in graphic detail in court filings.

The 1st drug, midazolam, is a benzodiazepine - like Xanax or Valium. It's not 
an anesthetic, lawyers argue, so the condemned could still feel the effects of 
the drugs that come after. The 2nd drug, a paralytic, might make it impossible 
to see the "agonizing pain" associated with the 3rd drug, the heart-stopping 
potassium chloride.

"Were there no paralytic, the arousal and pain caused by the potassium chloride 
would be obvious to any observer," the legal team wrote in the motion filed in 
federal court earlier this month. "Once the paralysis is total, the recipient 
is unable to communicate and feels as if he has been buried alive."M

It was using that 3-drug execution process last year that Arkansas prisoner 
Kenneth Williams lurched and jerked on the gurney in his final moments, 
according to court filings.

In their legal quest to avoid a painful death, the prisoners offer up a dark 
variety of alternatives, including firing squad, sevoflurane gas, diazepam and 
fentanyl, an oral dose of secobarbital and pentobarbital.

To show that any of those methods is viable, they have to prove that it's 
possible to get the drugs involved, which is why the prisoners' lawyers turned 
to Texas for answers. But, according to a June court filing, the Texas prison 
system hasn't fully complied with the subpoena issued in connection with the 
case, which is set to go to trial in November.

"The TDCJ has refused to provide any of the requested information," the 
prisoners' lawyers write. "Thus, plaintiffs seek an order compelling the TDCJ 
to comply with their obligations pursuant to plaintiffs' valid subpoena issued 
by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas."

A Texas prison spokesman declined to comment, but in a court filing late Monday 
the state responded to the prisoners' motion, arguing that the subpoena wasn't 
sent to the right person, that it was overbroad, and that the information is 
shielded by Texas secrecy laws.

This isn't the 1st time one state's death row prisoners have lobbied for 
release of information about another state's lethal injection drugs; 2 
Mississippi inmates in 2016 tried to get similar information out of the 
Missouri Department of Corrections. That effort failed. Now, the Arkansas case 
could lead to more court filings and requests for information in other death 
penalty states.

(source: Houston Chronicle)








KENTUCKY:

Kentucky jury begins deliberations in murder of Marine



Jury deliberations began Monday night in the trial of 2 men accused in the 
murder of a Marine Cpl. Jonathan Price and the wounding of his wife, Megan.

Dawan Mulazim and Quincinio Canada are charged in the June 21, 2014, shootings 
in a parking lot of the Austin City Saloon in Lexington as well as the robbery 
6 days earlier at a Quality Inn in which the alleged murder weapon was stolen.

If convicted, the 2 men face the possibility of the death penalty.

(source: kentucky.com)





NEBRASKA:

Nebraska government mustn't sidestep its disclosure obligations on death 
penalty procedure



Holding state officials to standards of transparency and accountability serves 
the public interest. That includes actions the Nebraska state government takes 
in regard to the death penalty.

A Lancaster County District judge has upheld that principle in ruling that 
Nebraska law requires the state to release records of its communications with 
the state's lethal injection drug supplier.

The state has released similar records in the past, and the public interest was 
served: Such disclosure in 2015 showed that Nebraska officials lost $54,400 in 
state funds by trying to purchase foreign drugs that the state could not 
legally import.

Without this openness, government can operate without accountability. That ill 
serves the public and, long term, encourages a culture of secretiveness on the 
part of state employees and administrators. This is precisely why Nebraska has 
laws obligating state agencies to make information public.

In her June 18 ruling, Judge Jodi Nelson said Nebraska law obligates the state 
Department of Correctional Services to release documents about the source of 
its lethal drug purchases but not documents that identify members of the 
execution team. Attorney General Doug Peterson, opposing the first part of the 
ruling, is now appealing.

In November 2016, Nebraska voted by an overwhelming margin, 60 % to 40 %, to 
restore the death penalty after the Legislature repealed it. Before the vote, 
The World-Herald editorially supported restoring capital punishment, stating 
that "the death penalty should remain an option for the worst capital crimes." 
This remains our position.

The central issue in this instance, though, is a broader principle: ensuring 
that the government doesn???t sidestep its disclosure obligations, regardless 
of whether the specific issue is the death penalty process or any other state 
action.

The state has complied with this requirement before. As the judge has stated, 
it needs to do so now.

(source: Omaha World-Herald)