Tennessee is refusing to release its new execution manual. Here’s why it matters

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Just days after tennessee announced it was a new manual for executing death row prisonersthe state’s top prison officials have said they will not release the document to the public.

The Tennessee Department of Correction told The Associated Press last week that they had to file a public records request to obtain a copy of the latest execution manual, known as a protocol. However, the agency rejected the AP’s request this week, saying it must 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 reflects efforts in the US to suppress public access surrounding executions, especially after anti-death penalty activists used data to expose problems to bring.

Here’s what you need to know:

The protocol typically consists of a detailed set of procedures describing how the state executes death row inmates. Tennessee operated under a 2018 protocol that included guidance on selecting implementation team personnel and the training they were required to undergo. It explained how to obtain, store and administer lethal injection drugs. It provided instructions on the prisoner’s housing, diet, and visitation in the days leading up to the execution. It contained instructions for choosing media witnesses.

For lethal injection, the 2018 protocol required a series of three drugs administered in sequence.

The new version unveiled last week only requires one single dose pentobarbital. But that’s all that is known about the revised protocol.

In an email sent Monday, Tennessee corrections spokesperson Kayla Hackney told the AP that the “protocol is not a public record” and cited a Tennessee statute that makes the identities of people carrying out executions confidential .

However, that same statute says that the existence of confidential information in a document is not a reason to deny access to it, and notes that the confidential information must be redacted.

In 2018, the Tennessee corrections agency provided a redacted copy of the protocol to an AP reporter via email.

In 2007, an earlier version of the protocol was treated as a public document and provided to the AP after former Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, announced a surprise halt to executions. A reporter’s review of the 100-page “Execution Manual” found a jumble of conflicting instructions, combining new instructions for lethal injections with instructions for electrocution.

Executions in Tennessee have been on hold since 2022, when the state admitted this was the case not followed the 2018 protocol. The Department of Correction, among other things, did not consistently test the execution drugs for potency and purity.

A independent assessment The state’s lethal injection practices later revealed that none of the drugs prepared for the seven inmates executed since 2018 had been fully tested. Later, prosecutors admitted in court that two of the people most responsible for overseeing lethal injection drugs in Tennessee “wrongly testified” under oath that officials tested the chemicals as required.

The number of executions in the US has been at an all-time low for years, but the small group of states that still carry out the death penalty has only increased the secrecy surrounding the procedures, especially how and where the state secures the drugs used for lethal injections. are used.

Many states argue that secrecy is critical to protect the safety of those involved in the execution process. But in a 2018 report, the Washington DC-based nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center found that this argument often led to these states refusing to provide information about the qualifications of their execution teams and that some courts have criticized such arguments for lacking of evidence that increased disclosure would result in threats against prison officials.

Kelley Henry, head of the federal public defender’s habeas unit that represents many death row inmates in Tennessee, described the state’s refusal to release the new protocol as “mystifying” given that background.

“The secrecy, which shrouded the former execution protocol, created a culture of incompetence and lack of accountability,” she said in an email.