Just days after Tennessee announced a new manual for executing death row inmates, the state’s top prison officials said they will not release the document to the public.
The Tennessee Department of Corrections asked The Associated Press to file a public records request to obtain a copy of the latest execution manual, known as protocols. However, the agency this week declined the AP’s request, saying it needed to keep the entire document secret to protect the identities of the executioner and others involved.
The decision to maintain secrecy differs from how the state has handled similar requests in the past, but mirrors efforts to suppress public access around executions across the U.S., particularly as concerns raised by anti-death penalty activists. After using the record to highlight.
Here’s what:
What is execution protocol?
The protocol is usually a detailed set of procedures that outline how the state executes death row inmates. Tennessee was operating under 2018 protocols that included instructions for selecting and training execution team staff. It explained how lethal injection drugs should be procured, stored and administered. It contained instructions regarding the prisoner’s accommodation, diet and visits in the days before his execution. It provided instructions on how to select media witnesses.
For lethal injection, a series of three drugs administered in sequence are required, according to the 2018 protocol.
The new version unveiled last week requires only a single dose of pentobarbital. But that’s all that is known about the revised protocol.
What reason does Tennessee give for not issuing a new protocol?
In an email sent Monday, Tennessee Corrections spokeswoman Kayla Hackney told the AP that “the protocol is not a public record” and cited Tennessee law that makes the identities of people executed confidential.
However, the same statute states that the existence of confidential information in a record is not a reason to deny access to it, providing that confidential information must be redacted.
What has Tennessee done in the past?
In 2018, Tennessee’s corrections agency provided a redacted copy of the transcript via email to an AP reporter.
In 2007, a previous version of the protocol was treated as a public record and provided to the AP after former Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, announced a sudden halt to executions. A reporter’s review of that 100-page “execution manual” found a jumble of conflicting instructions, mixing new lethal-injection instructions with those for electric shock.
Why did Tennessee update its protocol?
Executions in Tennessee are on hold through 2022, when the state acknowledged it was not following 2018 protocols. Among other things, the Department of Corrections was not consistently testing execution drugs for potency and purity.
An independent review of the state’s lethal injection practice later found that none of the drugs prepared for seven inmates executed since 2018 had been thoroughly tested. Later, the state Attorney General’s office admitted in court that two of the people most responsible for overseeing Tennessee’s lethal injection drugs had “falsely tested” the drugs under oath, claiming that officials were testing the chemicals as required.
So what is so secret about it?
Executions in the U.S. have been at historic lows for years, but the small group of states that still carry out the death penalty have increased secrecy around the procedures, particularly over whether states can use them for lethal injections. How and where does it secure the medicines?
Many states argue that confidentiality is important to protect those involved in the execution process. Yet in a 2018 report, the Washington-D.C.-based non-profit Death Penalty Information Center found that this reasoning often leads these states to refuse to provide information about the qualifications of their execution teams and some courts do not consider the evidence. Such arguments have been criticized for their shortcomings. Public disclosure would result in threats against prison officials.
Given that background, Kelly Henry, head of the federal public defender’s captive unit, which represents many of Tennessee’s death row inmates, called the state’s refusal to release new protocols “mysterious.”
“The secrecy that shrouded pre-execution protocols created a culture of incompetence and lack of accountability,” he said in an email.
