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Thread: Indiana Capital Punishment News

  1. #31
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Death penalty ‘secrecy statute’ now in hands of justices

    It’s now year 6 of an ongoing battle between the Indiana Department of Correction and a Washington, D.C., lawyer who wants to know the drugs used in Indiana’s lethal injection cocktail and who supplies them. In those 6 years, a public records request, a lawsuit and a legislative change have propelled the dispute to the Indiana Supreme Court, which now has a consequential ruling in its hands.

    The dispute started fairly straight-forward: the lawyer, A. Katherine Toomey, asked for information about Indiana’s lethal injection protocol, and the Department of Correction provided a redacted response that did not identify the drug suppliers. Toomey filed suit and won a court order, but the case became more complicated when the General Assembly enacted a statute that Toomey says unfairly targeted her public records request.

    The state justices are now tasked with answering questions that go beyond the Access to Public Records Act. They are also grappling with constitutional questions that implicate the lines drawn in Indiana’s separation of powers doctrine.

    The case, Indiana Department of Correction v. A. Katherine Toomey, 19S-PL-401, was heard by the court May 27 and is now in the justices’ hands for a final ruling.

    Finality and constitutionality

    The Toomey case was argued by Indiana Solicitor General Thomas M. Fisher, representing the DOC, and Peter Racher of Plews Shadley Racher & Braun, representing Toomey.

    The DOC appealed after Marion Circuit Judge Sheryl Lynch denied its motion to modify a summary judgment order in favor of Toomey based on a newly enacted statute. Lynch also ordered the state to pay more than $538,000 in attorney fees to Toomey.

    Following Lynch’s initial 2016 ruling in Toomey’s favor, a provision Toomey has dubbed the “Secrecy Statute” was inserted into Indiana’s 2017 budget bill. The statute, Indiana Code § 36-38-6-1(e) and (f), made confidential the identity of any outsourcing facility, wholesale drug distributor, pharmacy or pharmacist who contracts with the DOC to provide lethal injection drugs to the state.

    According to Toomey, and to Lynch, the legislative change was an unconstitutional infringement on Indiana’s separation of powers doctrine, as well as on the state’s single-subject rule and special-law prohibition. To that end, Lynch declined to apply the retroactive statute when the DOC asked her to modify the summary judgment motion in Toomey’s favor, prompting the department’s appeal.

    On appeal, Solicitor General Fisher told the justices it’s not unusual for the Legislature to enact statutes that apply to pending cases. In fact, he disputed Racher’s argument that the DOC did not have “clean hands” because of its work with the Indiana General Assembly, arguing instead that branches of government frequently coordinate on public issues.

    Racher, however, warned the high court of setting a “dangerous precedent” wherein politically well-connected entities — here, the DOC — can appeal to the Legislature to influence a judicial proceeding in their favor.

    Key to Racher’s case was his argument that Lynch’s decision was “final.” The Indiana Court of Appeals had previously ruled the trial court’s summary judgment ruling wasn’t final for appellate purposes, and the Supreme Court denied transfer.

    Racher, however, said a judgment can be final for constitutional purposes, even if not for appellate purposes. Under that theory, he said it was unconstitutional for the DOC, which is part of the Indiana executive branch, to appeal to the legislative branch for a retroactive law change that would alter a final decision from the judicial branch.

    Justice Mark Massa later called Racher’s view of final judgment “elastic.”

    Separation of powers aside, Racher, of Indianapolis, also criticized the 2017 statute as a special law retroactively targeting Toomey.

    Fisher disagreed, saying the purpose of the statute was to create uniformity — that is, under the statute, no past, present or future APRA requests would allow for the divulgence of the lethal drug suppliers.

    But “there is only one individual who has ever requested lethal injection records who was told by virtue of a retrospective statute that their records request would be erased, and that’s Toomey,” Racher countered.

    Additionally, Racher claimed the secrecy statute violated Indiana’s single-subject rule because it was inserted into the 2017 budget bill. Fisher, however, said the statute deals with contracts and state expenditures, making the budget bill an appropriate vehicle.

    ‘Assist’ing

    Before the 2017 statute was enacted, a similar law from 2002 kept confidential the identities of any people who “assisted” the Indiana State Prison warden in an execution. The DOC initially defended its response to Toomey’s APRA request under that statute, I.C. 35-38-6-6(e), but Lynch interpreted “assist” to mean being physically present at the execution — a definition that would not include the drug suppliers.

    Racher pursued that argument on appeal, claiming that the rest of I.C. 35-38-6-6 used the word “assist” to mean persons who are physically present. But Fisher flipped that argument on its head.

    “It’s not structured to say that it’s necessary to be there to assist — it’s the other way around,” the solicitor general argued. “It’s necessary to assist to be in the chamber, but not everyone who assists will be in the chamber.”

    A drug supplier undoubtedly assists in an execution, Fisher continued, because without the provision of drugs, the execution could not go on. He portrayed Toomey’s records request as an attempt to “publicly shame” lethal drug suppliers to the point where the suppliers will no longer supply the drugs.

    But Racher said APRA provides no disclosure exception based on the intentions of the person making the records request, nor based on the “political hot potato” that might emerge if the suppliers’ identities are known. What’s more, Racher said, Indiana public access counselor Luke Britt interpreted the “assist” statute to require disclosure of the suppliers’ identities.

    Fisher maintained that Britt’s opinion is owed no deference. The issue, he said, is that Toomey and other opponents of the death penalty know suppliers won’t give states the necessary drugs if their identities were known, which could effectively end the death penalty without a legislative act.

    “The Department of Correction currently lacks the anesthetic drug of the three-drug cocktail,” Fisher said. “If we reveal the identity of the suppliers, the state will never get the anesthetic and will never be able to maintain its supplies of the other drugs.”

    National trend

    Some states, however, take the opposite approach, according to Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C.

    He gave the example of Ohio, where Republican Gov. Mike DeWine has granted execution reprieves to protect the supply of drugs for the public health. According to Dunham, pharmaceutical companies have told governments that if drugs that are non-lethal on their own are used as part of a lethal cocktail, they will stop supplying those drugs for any purpose.

    Even so, Indiana is not alone in its efforts to keep lethal drug suppliers anonymous. A November 2018 report from the Death Penalty Information Center found that 11 states, Indiana included, had “secrecy statutes on the books.” The other 10 states included Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wyoming.

    Additionally, the report determined that among the 17 states that had executed an inmate between January 2011 and August 2018, “all withheld at least some information about the execution process,” and “(a)ll but one withheld information about the source of their execution drugs.”

    Indiana currently has 10 offenders on death row, though six of those sentences have been set aside pending further action. The state has not carried out an execution since 2009.

    (source: The Indiana Lawyer)
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  2. #32
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    7 things to know about the legal battle happening in Indiana over death penalty drugs

    A six-year legal fight over whether the Indiana Department of Correction should name the manufacturers and suppliers of the drugs used in Indiana's execution protocol is now before the Indiana Supreme Court.

    The case started with a 2014 public records request from a Washington, D.C., attorney who represents organizations that oppose the death penalty. Both the Indiana Public Access Counselor and a Marion Circuit Court judge ruled the information should be revealed, but IDOC refused. The state appealed the lower court ruling.

    Oral arguments in the case were conducted May 27. The state Supreme Court has not set a date for its decision.

    What the two sides say

    The IDOC contends it is difficult to obtain drugs for executions, and revealing the identity of suppliers would make that task even harder. Solicitor General Thomas Fisher, who is representing the state, said death penalty opponents want to know the identities "precisely so they can shame them into refusing to supply and manufacture those drugs for the purpose of executions."

    On the other side is Peter Michael Racher of the Indianapolis law firm Plews Shadley Racher & Braun. He said the state should have no concern about the public knowing who is supplying the drugs and whether they could "possibly result in a botched execution like we've seen in some other states."

    Several media organizations, including the Indianapolis Star, have filed briefs supporting release of the information.

    Why it matters

    Fisher said the state currently does not have the drugs needed to carry out an execution under Indiana law

    What about Terre Haute executions

    Those are federal executions carried out the the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. The Indiana legal fight has no bearing on those executions, which will be the first by the federal government since 2003.

    What's next in Indiana

    There are eight men on Death Row in Indiana, but no executions are scheduled at this time. That could be due, in part, to ongoing appeals and to the lack of drugs needed to administer a lethal injection.

    When was Indiana's last execution

    Matthew Eric Wrinkles, 46, was the last person to be executed by the state of Indiana. His death sentence was carried out by lethal injection Dec. 11, 2009. Wrinkles was sentenced to death for the 1994 murder of his estranged wife and two of her relatives.

    The death penalty in Indiana

    Since 1897, Indiana has executed 94 men by three methods: 13 by hanging, the last in 1907; 62 in the electric chair from 1914-1994; and 19 by lethal injection. Sixty-six were white, 28 were Black. The oldest was 64 and the youngest was 18.

    https://www.indystar.com/story/news/...ow/5383904002/
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  3. #33
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    Indiana’s darkest secret to be revealed: What drugs are in Death Row execution cocktail?

    The Indiana Supreme Court has ordered the Department of Correction to pay more than $500,000 in legal fees in a fight over one of the state's deepest, darkest secrets.

    At stake was whether the state had to reveal the mix of drugs the department plans to use to execute inmates on Indiana's Death Row. And last week, nearly 7 years after the case started, the Indiana Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that ordered IDOC to release the information.

    The ruling will hinder Indiana's ability to carry out death penalty sentences and leaves many unresolved issues that will likely end up back in court, Solicitor General Thomas Fisher, who represented the state in the case, said in an email response to questions from IndyStar.

    Indiana currently has eight men facing the death penalty. All are held on what is known as X Row at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City. No executions are currently scheduled — due primarily to the pending legal case.

    "It's not that there aren't prisoners on Death Row. It's just that we don't have the drugs to conform to the statute and regulations that we need," Fisher told IndyStar in a July interview.

    It all comes back to the convoluted legal fight that started in 2014 with a public records request from A. Katherine Toomey, a Washington, D.C., attorney who represents groups opposing the death penalty.

    Toomey asked the IDOC to identify the manufacturers, distributors and suppliers of drugs for its execution protocol.

    State officials refused her request.

    Indiana is far from alone in trying to protect the identities of death penalty drug suppliers, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

    Some drug companies don't want their drugs used for executions, others don't want their names disclosed for fear of public shaming or boycotts. That has made it difficult for Indiana and other states to acquire the drugs needed for executions and spurred the push to keep information about the drugs confidential.

    But Toomey persisted. Over the next three years, the legal wrangling wound through the Indiana Public Access Counselor, Marion Circuit Court and Indiana Court of Appeals before landing at the Indiana Supreme Court.

    Toomey prevailed at every stop and, while IDOC did provide some information, her request for manufacturer and supplier names was not fulfilled.

    In April 2017, as the Supreme Court was considering the state's request to hear a challenge to a Marion Circuit Court ruling, officials launched a late-night end run at the Statehouse to circumvent the ruling. It was the last day of the General Assembly's session. As lawmakers hammered out final details of the biennial budget bill, working into the wee hours, an unrelated provision was quietly tacked on without public notice or a hearing.

    The last-minute add-on — crafted with the help of IDOC and the governor's office, according to court records — changed Indiana law to specifically say contracts to acquire drugs for executions and the identities of manufacturers or suppliers is confidential and not subject to disclosure. Lawmakers made the change retroactive to cover "any request for information, discovery request, or proceeding, no matter when made or initiated."

    The bill was signed into law by Gov. Eric Holcomb on April 27, 2017 — the same day the Supreme Court declined to hear IDOC's appeal.

    Buoyed by the new law, the state asked Marion Circuit Judge Sheryl Lynch to reconsider her ruling in favor of Toomey. But Lynch wasn't swayed.

    Lynch ruled IDOC had not established the drugs were procured through a contract. In addition, she found the new law violated several constitutional principles. That included separation of powers and freedom of speech, because it prohibited individuals outside state government, such as drug manufacturers or suppliers, from providing the information.

    Lynch also ordered the state to pay Toomey more than $500,000 in attorney fees, citing the state's “egregious” conduct in pushing the legislative work-around.

    That's when the state asked the Supreme Court to overturn Lynch's new ruling.

    Even the Supreme Court was divided by the case, issuing a split 2-to-2 decision last week with justice Geoffrey Slaughter abstaining. Chief Justice Loretta Rush and justice Christopher Goff voted to uphold the lower court ruling, while justices Steven David and Mark Massa voted to overturn Lynch.

    Under court rules, when there is a tie vote the underlying trial court ruling is affirmed. In this case, that was Lynch's finding that the 2017 state law was unconstitutional and requiring IDOC to produce public records related to substances used in Indiana to carry out executions by lethal injection — and to pay Toomey's legal costs.

    "The decision is a vindication of the Indiana Access to Public Records Act. The law in Indiana has long required public agencies to respond to requests just like the one Kate Toomey made back in 2014," said Indianapolis attorney Peter Racher, who represented Toomey. "Citizens should not have to fight this hard to have their government respond to records requests."

    Because the case hinged on questions of state law, Racher said last week's decision cannot be appealed through the federal court system, including the Supreme Court of the United States.

    Indiana's effort to shield drug providers comes at a time when public opinion on the death penalty is shifting, even as federal officials rushed through 13 executions at Terre Haute in the final months of President Trump's administration.

    While polling by Gallup shows a majority of Americans still favor the death penalty for murder — the split was 55% to 43% in October — the level of support has dropped from 65% since Indiana's last execution in 2009. Meanwhile, opposition has risen from 31%.

    That means the concern about public pressure — real or perceived — on drug providers is likely to continue and increase. And that puts states in a tough spot with a growing number of major pharmaceutical companies saying they don't want their medicines used in executions.

    In response, at least 16 states have enacted laws shielding manufacturers and suppliers since 2011 in order to eliminate some of the obstacles to obtaining drugs to carry out state executions.

    Fisher, the solicitor general, said in July that a decision by the Supreme Court in favor of the state would remove one roadblock toward resuming executions in Indiana. "At that point we'd be able to, with more certainty and confidence, promise confidentiality to suppliers and manufacturers. Whether we'd be able to find people willing to supply the drugs in that circumstance would remain to be seen," he said.

    Now, the state won't be in a position to offer the hoped-for promise of confidentiality — even if it finds willing suppliers.

    But Racher called the state's concerns speculation.

    "There was no evidence in the record of this case that that is true. There were newspaper articles from other states, from other DOCs expressing concerns about this. But nobody from the Department of Correction provided any evidence that anyone within Indiana involved in implementing the death penalty has ever been threatened," he said.

    "There has been no evidence that releasing information so the public can be adequately informed on this important aspect of how the government works will prevent Indiana from implementing the death penalty going forward. That was all speculation."

    It's unclear whether the legislature would again try to act in the wake of the decision.

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ind...amp/6870693002
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  4. #34
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    Time for Indiana to bring back the electric chair.

  5. #35
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    I’m sure most of them would prefer the chair over injection
    Thank you for the adventure - Axol

    Tried so hard and got so far, but in the end it doesn’t even matter - Linkin Park

    Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever. - Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt

    I’m going to the ghost McDonalds - Garcello

  6. #36
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    Indiana Department of Corrections' secrets remain after justices rule for disclosure

    Despite a ruling in her favor from the Indiana Supreme Court capping her years-long quest to find out how the state of Indiana might carry out an execution, Washington, D.C., attorney Katherine Toomey was still waiting for answers 2 weeks later.

    “When I made this public records request in 2014, I never imagined that the state would spend the next 7 years fighting to prevent these records from being released to the public,” Toomey wrote in an email. “Transparency is a key principle of good governance and the rule of law. The state should not be operating in secret and refusing to disclose vital information to the public.”

    Since 2014, Toomey has had rulings from the Indiana public access counselor, and later, Marion Circuit Judge Sheryl Lynch, holding that what she is seeking — details about the drugs or ingredients the state of Indiana has in stock or plans to use in a lethal injection — is a matter of public record to which Toomey is entitled. The Indiana Supreme Court affirmed Lynch’s orders in a February 25 split decision, Indiana Dept. of Correction v. A. Katherine Toomey, 19S-PL-401.

    Nevertheless, at IL deadline, the Indiana Department of Correction and the Indiana Attorney General’s Office, which represents the DOC, had not disclosed the information to Toomey or her Indiana counsel at Plews Shadley Racher & Braun.

    Will the state comply?

    DOC declined to answer specific IL questions about, among other things, whether it believes the public has a right to know about how executions would be carried out and why the state agency has fought so hard to keep such details secret. “DOC is working with the Attorney General on the next steps after the Supreme Court decision,” a department spokesperson replied in an email. “We will abide by the orders of the court.”

    The AG’s office also declined to answer questions beyond a statement issued after the Indiana Supreme Court ordered DOC to comply with Lynch’s rulings from 2016 to 2019. Among other things, Lynch ordered DOC to disclose information about potential lethal injection drugs and pay Toomey’s legal team $538,000 and counting out of the public treasury for their trouble.

    But the AG’s office in a statement made no commitment to abiding by the court orders, instead alluding to further fights on the horizon and more tax money spent defending secrecy.

    “We are profoundly disappointed by the Indiana Supreme Court’s order,” the AG’s statement said. “The required disclosure of the manufacturers and suppliers of lethal injection drugs will continue to impede Indiana’s ability to carry out lawfully imposed sentences. This decision does not resolve the several important issues presented by this case, so the courts will undoubtedly be called upon again to wrestle with these issues in future cases at great expense to taxpayers.”

    Extreme measures

    The Indiana Attorney General’s Office signaling potential defiance of an Indiana Supreme Court order is but the latest extreme measure in a case full of them.

    Not only has DOC consistently refused to disclose what state agencies and courts have held are public records, the department undermined Lynch’s initial order in Toomey’s case by finagling lawmakers to insert a “secrecy statute” into the state budget bill in the middle of the night during the final hours of the 2017 session of the Indiana General Assembly.

    Lynch subsequently ruled that law, codified at Indiana Code 35-38-6-1(e) and (f), was unconstitutional on multiple grounds, one of several of her rulings justices affirmed. The law sought to muzzle anyone in the DOC supply chain for potential lethal injection drugs.

    “While we can only speculate about the state’s motives for hiding this information from the public, the state’s continued and dogged resistance to disclose public records and its refusal to openly and honestly discuss a matter of great public interest is deeply concerning,” Plews Shadley partner Peter Racher, lead counsel on Toomey’s case, said in response to emailed IL questions.

    “This case demonstrates how damaging, costly, and futile the state’s reckless attempts at secrecy have been, and one would hope that Indiana officials do not seek to repeat these unconstitutional acts again. How the Indiana Legislature passes laws has a bearing on every citizen in the land. This case makes clear that state officials cannot bulldoze through the legislature last-minute legislation that they worry might be controversial without public notice or chance for debate,” Racher said.

    Bigger picture

    Indiana Rep. Robin Shackleford, D-Indianapolis, chair of the Indiana Black Legislative Caucus, issued a statement hailing the Supreme Court ruling in Toomey as “a victory for transparency in our criminal justice system.” Shackleford also is House sponsor of Senate Bill 252, which would set up a broad legislative study committee review of Indiana’s death penalty. The bill cleared the Senate on a near-unanimous vote and is assigned to the House rules committee.

    “Looking back on how we got here, the determination of the IDOC and Republican legislators to keep the details of this (lethal injection) cocktail a secret highlights the underlying issue: As more and more people become aware of the deep flaws and systematic inequalities related to capital punishment, the tide of public opinion is finally turning,” Shackleford said. She also pointed to studies showing racial disparities nationwide in death sentences and “an alarming number of death row acquittals.”

    According to the Death Penalty Information Center, there are eight prisoners currently on death row at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City. The state last executed a condemned prisoner in 2009, and no executions are currently scheduled.

    Among the questions DOC declined to answer was whether it currently could, if ordered to do so, carry out an execution. “We are unable to speculate on what may happen in the future regarding executions,” the department’s statement said.

    Meanwhile, Hoosier taxpayers can expect to continue to pay for the state’s intransigence toward Toomey in the form of her legal fees, plus 6% annual interest, as the meter continues to run. The $538,000 Lynch awarded in fees was in June 2019, before the case was appealed to the Indiana Supreme Court.

    “These fees were incurred because Indiana officials unlawfully refused to disclose public documents in violation of Indiana’s transparency laws despite numerous court orders to do so,” Racher said. “In fact, our entitlement to attorney fees in this case is a direct result of the Department of Correction’s refusal to produce the requested documents after the Office of the Public Access Counselor issued an advisory opinion in August 2014, that Ms. Toomey was entitled to the documents and the Department of Correction was in violation of the Indiana Access to Public Records Act. The state could have avoided these costs if they had simply followed the law 7 years ago.”

    https://www.theindianalawyer.com/art...for-disclosure
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  7. #37
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Indiana’s death row: Some doubt sentences will be carried out, others worry for the convicted who wait years for death

    By Leslie Bonilla Muńiz
    HSPA News Service

    Eight men languish on Indiana’s death row as the state struggles to obtain the drugs needed to conduct an execution. Its longest resident has lived 29 years awaiting execution; its most recent addition has waited eight.

    The de-facto moratorium on executions in Indiana has some prosecutors doubting that even a successful sentencing will be carried out, and defenders concerned for the convicted who live years under threat of death.

    Meanwhile, other states such as Texas and Oklahoma have moved forward with executions this year.

    Four of the men on Indiana’s death row have exhausted all their appeals and have no other recourse, according to the Indiana Public Defender Council’s website. But the Indiana Department of Correction has no orders for executions and no dates set, according to spokeswoman Annie Goeller.

    Indiana hasn’t put a man to death since December 2009, when it executed Matthew Eric Wrinkles, although there have been executions at federal prisons in Indiana. All the men reside in the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City.

    That’s because the agency has no supply of the three drugs — methohexital, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride — it would use in its lethal injection drug cocktail, Goeller confirmed.

    Indiana and other governments have in recent years struggled to acquire the drugs from pharmaceutical manufacturers who don’t want their products — which have therapeutic purposes — to be used in executions. Some, like Texas, have switched to a single-drug protocol of Pentobarbital.

    “Indiana, like many states, is looking into available options,” Goeller wrote in an email.

    Moving forward

    Madison County Prosecutor Rodney Cummings has pursued the death penalty in two of at least four cases since he took office in 1994.

    Cummings announced his second on Aug. 17. But he’s skeptical of how it’ll unfold.

    Carl Roy Webb Boards II, 42, of Anderson, is accused of shooting Elwood Police Officer Noah Shahnavaz, 24, of Fishers, to death during a 2 a.m. traffic stop on July 31.

    “The process in this case is, 'Is this case among the worst of the worst?' And I’ve never seen anything like this before in a police shooting, basically,” Cummings said. “I mean, he shot him 36 times.”

    Cummings said he made the decision to pursue the death penalty after taking a hard look at the evidence himself, getting experienced prosecutors from around Indiana to evaluate the case, and asking Shahnavaz’s family if they’d like to move forward with it.

    “I think the likelihood of conviction is fairly — very high,” Cummings said.

    Still, he added, “I think the likelihood that this defendant would ever be executed is unlikely. But we all have our responsibilities in the process, and my responsibility is to move forward in an appropriate case.”

    Cummings’ office asked for an additional $50,000 in its 2023 budget to cover the early costs of a case that’s likely to stretch for years to come.

    A cruel wait?

    Eric Koselke defended his first death penalty case in 1985, six months out of law school. Since then, Koselke told the Capital Chronicle, “I’ve done it all.”

    That Indiana has no executions planned and no drugs in stock offers him little comfort.

    “They could get them at any time. I mean, we don’t know what’s going on with that, as defense attorneys. They’re not going to tell us,” said Koselke, who’s a death penalty consultant for Indiana’s Public Defender Council in addition to running his own cases.

    The wait changes no calculations, he said, because for defense attorneys, chances of success peak at trial and drop with each appeal.

    But the wait for death concerns him.

    “I still think the sentences should be commuted,” Koselke said. “Those guys are just sitting there, captive, to people who they know, one day, are going to kill them, and they don’t even know when they’re going to die.”

    “In my opinion … I think that’s cruel and unusual punishment,” he said. “I mean, they’ve been there for years waiting to be executed and I can’t imagine living under that kind of pressure.”

    Four of the men sitting on Indiana’s death row have run out of appeals. Three have appeals pending, and another was found incompetent to be executed.

    In other states

    Not everyone’s struggling to obtain drugs used for lethal injections.

    Five states have executed 10 people in 2022, as of Aug. 25, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a non-profit that tracks death penalty data and disseminates reports.

    Texas’s Department of Criminal Justice — which has conducted two executions this year — uses only pentobarbital, according to Director of Communications Amanda Hernandez.

    Asked if her agency had experienced any difficulties in procuring the drug, Hernandez wrote simply, “We have ample supply."

    The Indiana Department of Correction didn’t respond to questions about its procurement attempts, and declined multiple requests for an interview.

    But in a years-long lawsuit, the agency’s staff argued that without confidentiality for manufacturers and distributors, it was “practically impossible” to get the drugs.

    Washington, D.C., lawyer Katherine Toomey asked for information related to lethal injections in 2014 under Indiana’s Access to Public Records Act.

    “The Department of Correction wrote her a letter that essentially said, ‘Take a long walk off of a short pier,” said Peter Racher, a partner at Indianapolis-based Plews Shadley Racher & Braun. He and Josh Tatum eventually litigated Toomey’s case, filed in 2016.

    Debra Lynch, a federal judge for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, wrote an order in Toomey’s favor in 2017. But behind the scenes, the Department of Correction was working with the governor’s office to devise a legislative solution Racher believes was aimed at Toomey’s request.

    On the last day of 2017’s legislative session, lawmakers inserted a provision exempting information related to lethal injections from the state’s public records law into a lengthy budget bill. Lynch granted summary judgement to the agency instead.

    When the Indiana Supreme Court took it up, its four members — one recused himself — split, affirming Lynch’s decision in 2021.

    But the records Toomey had requested showed Indiana hadn’t successfully procured drugs for years beforehand.

    “Even if, you know, The New York Times published on the front page the records that we got, there was no way that that information was going to have any current impact on anything,” Racher said.

    “They made it sound like if these records were released, that’ll be the end of the death penalty in Indiana,” he added. “But I don’t think you can say it’s because of Kate Toomey’s request for public records.”

    https://www.reporter.net/indiana/new...7150ab9a3.html
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

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