Deborah Denno quoted in a CNN report on how — following a seven-week lull following the botched execution of an Oklahoma man — executions resumed in the United States with three men put to death over 24 hours despite questions about the drugs used to kill them.
The secrecy laws have also made it tough on defense lawyers trying to argue that lethal injection causes a painful death. Courts have ruled that condemned inmates don’t have a right to know what drugs will be used to kill them, said Fordham University law professor Deborah Denno, who has extensively studied the lethal injection debate.
“Departments of correction are becoming so secretive that lawyers can’t get enough information to litigate a case,” she said. “It’s a Catch-22.”
It’s not clear there’s much Obama or the Justice Department could do to limit how states approach lethal injection, an issue the Supreme Court has addressed just once — in 2008 — and which courts seem hesitant to reopen, according to Denno.
Read the entire CNN article.