State appeals reveal-lethal-drug-seller ruling to justices

State attorneys asked the Arkansas Supreme Court on Monday to halt a Pulaski County judge’s order for the Department of Correction to release details about its supply of execution drugs before the end of the week.

The state’s highest court has already intervened in one ongoing case to keep secret information about the source of the drugs. With Monday’s filing by the attorney general’s office, it’s being asked to do so again.

Twice this year, ahead of a planned execution at the Cummins Unit, Little Rock attorney Steven Shults filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the prisons department seeking unredacted copies of the labels and package inserts for one of the three drugs that Arkansas uses in lethal injections.

Twice, the department denied his request, citing secrecy provisions in the state’s Method of Execution Act, which it argued are necessary to mask the manufacturers of the drugs and maintain a steady supply.

And twice, circuit judges in Little Rock have sided with Shults, ordering the department to release the records and prompting the state to appeal.

The most recent order came last week from Pulaski County Circuit Judge Mackie Pierce, who said the execution law, passed in 2015, did not supersede the 1967 Freedom of Information Act.

Pierce ordered the state to produce the records for Shults by the close of business Thursday.

Attorney General Leslie Rutledge on Monday sought an emergency stay of that order.

A phone call to the law office representing Shults was not answered Monday evening.

The Method of Execution Act protects the identity of those who “compound, test, sell or supply” the drugs Arkansas uses in executions. Shults argued that the language does not cover manufacturers, while state attorneys argued it does protect those companies.

Arkansas stopped providing redacted copies of the documents after an Associated Press reporter was able to match them with the manufacturer.

Drug manufacturers have objected to the use of their products in executions, but Arkansas

has been able to obtain the drugs anyway.

Ahead of a sequence of April executions, Department of Correction Director Wendy Kelley was able obtain a batch of potassium chloride used to carry out the deaths of four inmates.

In August, the same day Rutledge asked for an execution date to be set for convicted murderer Jack Greene, the Department of Correction announced it had replaced its expired supply of midazolam, a sedative.

It was the new supply of midazolam that Shults sought records for in his most recent lawsuit. Earlier in the year, he had sued for the same records regarding the potassium chloride supply.

Shults’ earlier lawsuit resulted in a stay from the Arkansas Supreme Court ahead of the scheduled executions. That case is currently on appeal to justices.