Public, press have right to witness executions
By The Associated Press
08.06.02
SAN FRANCISCO — The people of California have a right to know all that goes on in the state's execution chamber, a federal appeals panel ruled on Aug. 2 as it upheld witnesses' right to watch the killing from beginning to end.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that prison officials' claims that showing all of the execution puts prison staff who participate at risk of being targeted are unfounded and go against a tradition of making information available to the public.
"To determine whether lethal injection executions are fairly and humanely administered, or whether they ever can be, citizens must have reliable information about the 'initial procedures,' which are invasive, possibly painful and may give rise to serious complications," wrote Judge Raymond C. Fisher.
The case stems from the state's policy, begun in February 1996, of drawing a curtain across the glass windows of the execution chamber until the inmate is strapped down with the needles in his veins and the execution team is out of sight.
The policy was first implemented for the execution of serial killer William Bonin, the first man to be put to death by lethal injection in California. When the curtain was drawn back, Bonin lay so still it was hard to tell when the execution began. It was later revealed that the execution was not quite so calm as it seemed since prison staff had spent several minutes behind the curtain trying unsuccessfully to insert the needles.
After the Bonin execution, news media groups including the California First Amendment Coalition and the Associated Press brought suit, saying witnesses have a right to view the whole process.
Over the next few years the policy was both struck down and upheld as the case went from the district to appellate courts. Witnesses saw all of the May 1996 execution of Keith Daniel Williams but only the final minutes of the next four executions. A ruling by a federal district court struck down the precaution for the March 2001 execution of Robert Massie and the execution this year of Stephen Wayne Anderson.
The Aug. 2 ruling, made unanimously by a three-judge panel, upheld the district court decision.
Roger Myers, an attorney representing the news media in California First Amendment Coalition v. Woodford, called the ruling "a great victory for the First Amendment and for the people of this state who can now remain informed, fully informed, of one of the most controversial and important issues of the day."
The death penalty has been much in the news lately, particularly with the Supreme Court's decision in June that executing the mentally retarded goes against the 8th Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment.
A spokesman for the state Attorney General's office said attorneys there are still reviewing the opinion and haven't decided whether to appeal.
Russ Heimerich, a spokesman for the state Corrections Department said prison officials "would prefer to be able to fully protect the staff," but there haven't been any problems so far with showing the execution from the time the inmate is taken into the chamber.
The court found there was no evidence that guards whose faces have been visible as they prepared prisoners for execution have been retaliated against. The court also noted there is the option of surgical masks.
Meanwhile, the court said, the public needs information about executions to decide whether they conform with evolving standards of decency.
That is a legal standard used by the Supreme Court in the June ruling that found executing the mentally retarded is cruel and unusual punishment.
"What they're recognizing is ... that at the very time that there is more public debate on the death penalty than in any time in recent years, the state was moving to restrict the amount of information that would be available to the public about how executions would be carried out," Myers said.
None of the 600-plus inmates on California's death row, the nation's largest, is facing imminent execution.