4/24/2016 Cloaking the Death Penalty in Secrecy is Bad Policy - NewsAdvance.com : Editorials
Cloaking the Death Penalty in
Secrecy is Bad Policy
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Posted: Sunday, April 24, 2016 4:00 am
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
When the Virginia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union sides with
Republicans in the General Assembly against Democratic Gov. Terry
McAuliffe, you can’t help but take notice.
That’s exactly what happened in last week’s veto session in Richmond when
the House of Delegates took up McAuliffe’s amendments to a bill that would
have restored the use of the electric chair as a means of carrying out the death
penalty. In recent years, states have had extreme difficulty purchasing the
components of the three-drug mixture used in executions by lethal injections.
Drug companies have stopped selling the drugs to states for use in executions,
forcing states either to end capital punishment altogether or resort to
outdated methods of execution.
In the 2015 Assembly session, McAuliffe,
F & L M ARKET working with Senate Minority Leader
Locally owned since 1993 and Serving the Dick Saslaw of Northern Virginia, tried
eee Ml 46, pass legislation that would allow the
Eve ryday state to purchase the needed drugs from
L OW P rices so-called compounding pharmacies and
to do so in total secrecy to shield the
companies from any bad publicity.
Though the Virginia Senate passed the
bill, Republicans in the House of
Delegates shut down the effort, largely
out of concern for the secrecy that would surround the process.
This year, the Assembly sent McAuliffe legislation that would make
electrocution the backup method of execution if the needed drugs ever
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4/24/2016 Cloaking the Death Penalty in Secrecy is Bad Policy - NewsAdvance.com : Editorials
became totally unavailable on the open market.
And that’s where things got interesting.
Rather than sign or veto the bill outright, McAuliffe chose to gut it and
essentially copy and paste the text of the failed 2015 bill. Executions by lethal
injection would continue in Virginia under his “amendment,” with the state
empowered to purchase the drugs in utter secrecy.
The ACLU, and many Republicans, vehemently argued against wrapping the
transactions in secrecy.
Drugs purchased from compounding pharmacies have been found to be at the
root of several horrifically botched executions in the past couple of years.
The worst year was 2014, leading up to McAuliffe’s failed efforts in the 2015
Assembly to OK secrecy-shrouded purchase of execution drugs. In Arizona,
convicted murderer Joseph Rudolph Wood III took almost two hours to die
after injection; a media witness wrote he gasped for air more than 600 times,
saying he looked “like a fish on shore gulping for air.” In Oklahoma, killer
Michael Wilson told his executioners his body felt as if it were on fire from the
inside as drugs were pumped into him. Ohio executed murderer Dennis
McGuire using an untested two-drug combination; he took 25 minutes to die,
gasping for air all the while.
Public reaction to these and other problematic executions was swift and
strong. Support for capital punishment dropped in several polls when details
became public.
When House Republicans stopped secrecy efforts in 2015, it was the
broadside against the Virginia Freedom of Information Act that drew their ire.
Del. Rick Morris, a Republican from Carrollton, was blunt: “I support the
death penalty, [but] the people ought to know how the government transacts
its business.”
Del. James LeMunyon, another Northern Virginia Republican who’s a staunch
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4/24/2016 Cloaking the Death Penalty in Secrecy is Bad Policy - NewsAdvance.com : Editorials
FOIA defender, said the introduction of such total secrecy into the process
would “blow a hole” in FOIA solely “for the convenience of people inside
government.”
This year, McAuliffe used the electric chair bill to box House Republicans into
a corner.
Initially, the House rejected the governor’s amendments on a 51-47 vote. Del.
Jackson Miller, a Manassas Republican and the bill’s sponsor, urged his
colleagues to reconsider. The amended bill, he said, wasn’t perfect, but
McAuliffe was adamant: Accept his amendments or he would veto the original
bill, effectively ending capital punishment in Virginia.
Whatever your opinion of capital punishment is, the imposition of total
secrecy is completely counter to the concept of open, transparent government.
The public needs to be completely certain that business conducted in its name
and on its behalf is above board and carried out properly. And there is no
more serious business than when the state takes the life of a heinous criminal.
We strongly doubt this is the last we'll hear of the issue in Virginia. We hope
capital punishment supporters, realizing the need to be completely open with
the public about the process, and the ACLU will work to overturn this law in
the courts.
Secrecy, capital punishment and the administration of justice do not go
together.
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