A “botched” and “bloody” execution attempt ultimately led an Alabama judge to order part of the state’s lethal execution protocol and related records unsealed.
The public’s interest in understanding the state’s execution process outweighs confidentiality, U.S. District Judge Karon Bowdre wrote May 30.
The decision is “significant given the lengths to which Alabama has gone to prevent the public from learning anything about its execution process and to avoid transparency, accountability, and public oversight of its death-penalty policy,” Robert Dunham, of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, told Bloomberg Law.
“No other state has taken secrecy to the ...