Deborah Denno quoted in the Kansas City Star about lifting the shroud of secrecy surrounding the country’s death chambers in order for the public to truly understand what’s at stake when during an execution.
Openness is particularly important in light of recent executions where the condemned writhed and gasped and died in apparent agony, said Deborah Denno, a law professor at Fordham University and one of the country’s most eminent capital punishment experts.
“The prospect of televising executions makes sense given the continuing evidence of gross incompetence by departments of corrections during execution procedures,” Denno said. “Secrecy invites incompetence.”
Attorneys for Russell Bucklew wanted a tape kept by a federal judge to be viewed by attorneys in the judge’s chambers. The videographer would have been prohibited from showing any members of the execution team, according to the defense proposal.
The state objected, saying that Bucklew had no right to such an arrangement and that it created “the real potential that private parties videotaping executions could lead us back to the days of executions as public spectacles.”
Denno, who supported Bucklew’s request for a videotaped execution, long has called for a video record of all executions.
And while going from the current system where no cameras and only a handful of witnesses are present to televised executions is a big step, “like going from zero to 100,” she said that making the process fully transparent would be the best way to ensure that executions are carried out properly and constitutionally.
“Like cameras in the courtroom, televised executions would allow the public to see how the state carries out its punishments, and Americans could more objectively judge for themselves whether the process is cruel and unusual.”
The entire Kansas City Star article ran on May 24, 2014.