Fed judge tosses death row inmates' suit

By Marc Kovac | February 20, 2015 at 12:02a.m.

COLUMBUS

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit challenging a new state law that allows secrecy for sellers of drugs used in executions.

U.S. District Court Judge Gregory L. Frost said the death-row inmates who filed the suit do not have standing to challenge the legislation.

He also noted that the new law “does not suppress speech or the ability to oppose the death penalty. It also does not prevent plaintiffs from speaking to their intended audience.

“Rather, the statutory scheme simply cuts off Ohio and its employees as a source of specific information for both proponents and opponents of the death penalty.”

Several inmates facing lethal injections — Ronald Phillips, Grady Brinkley, Raymond Tibbetts and Robert Van Hook — sued the state after lawmakers passed, and Gov. John Kasich signed legislation shielding from public view the names of compounding pharmacies that sell execution drugs to the state.

Information about others involved in lethal injections also is covered by the legislation, which takes effect next month.

Applicable records will be kept confidential and not subject to the state’s open- records laws, with limited access by judges reviewing death penalty cases.

Individuals involved in conducting executions will be covered by the confidentiality law automatically; businesses will have to request anonymity, via an application to state prison officials, and their names will be released after 20 years.

The law changes were needed, proponents said, because overseas drug manufacturers refused to sell their products for use in executions.

The group of death-row inmates sued, alleging the law changes were unconstitutional. The state moved to dismiss the suit.

Judge Frost sided with the state, saying the plaintiffs’ challenges were “not tied to actual or imminent injuries” but were “instead based on conjectural or hypothetical injuries, some of which are in fact a misreading of the statutory scheme.”

Kasich last month postponed all lethal injections scheduled through the end of the year, setting a new schedule that includes near-monthly executions in 2016.