Idaho committee kills bill expanding execution drug secrecy

BOISE, Idaho — A bill that would have increased the secrecy surrounding Idaho’s execution drug suppliers died in a Senate committee hearing Wednesday on a tie vote. Idaho Department of Correction Director Josh Tewalt said potential drug suppliers want the confidentiality provisions written into state law before they will sell to Idaho’s prison officials. “The understanding has always been, if we can’t do this with professionalism and dignity and respect, then we don’t do it.” But Ronald Bush, a retired U.S. District Court judge who has presided over cases where a condemned Idaho inmate was fighting the state’s execution policy, said the legislation puts the Eighth Amendment rights of a condemned person and the First Amendment rights of the general public at risk. During a hearing on the request, the Idaho Department of Correction withheld information about how they were obtaining the executions drugs, “even though they were well aware that I was concerned about the hasty manner in which the state was going about this execution,” Bush said. In lethal injection executions, “it’s the details that matter,” Bush said, noting that there have been instances in other states where executions have been botched, resulting in “horrific and even barbaric circumstances.” Anne Taylor, a criminal defense attorney who is qualified to represent people facing the death penalty, said she already has to tell her clients that under state law they won’t find out exactly which drug or drug combination will be used in executions until it is often too late to take legal action.