Deborah Denno quoted in an Associated Press article appearing in the Houston Chronicle about an Arizona judge’s potential decision to postpone the July 23 execution of an Arizona death row inmate who is demanding details about the two-drug combination that will be used to put him to death.
Deborah Denno, a professor at Fordham Law School who has studied executions for more than two decades, said the First Amendment arguments by lawyers for condemned inmates are a relatively new development that grew out of the problems that states have faced in recent years in getting supplies of lethal injection drugs.
The arguments weren’t raised in the past because states used the same three-drug combination and didn’t have problems getting access to the drugs, until the maker of a sedative used in executions decided not to make it anymore. Then, states started to shield the identity of the drugmakers.
“The issues have changed — the dynamics have changed — that require this approach,” Denno said. “This wouldn’t have been necessary in the past.”
Read the entire Associated Press article.