Alabama loses ruling on execution files

ATLANTA — A federal appeals court sided with news media organizations Monday in ruling that Alabama can’t keep its lethal-injection protocol secret from the public.

A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta rejected Alabama’s argument that its execution method is not a court record and thus should remain secret.

“Judicial records provide grounds upon which a court relies in deciding cases, and thus the public has a valid interest in accessing these records to ensure the continued integrity and transparency of our governmental and judicial offices,” the court stated in its ruling.

At issue is what the court described as the botched execution of Doyle Hamm on Feb. 22, 2018. The court said that after several failed attempts to insert a needle into Hamm’s veins, the execution was called off as midnight approached. The Associated Press and other news outlets then sought the state’s execution protocol and related records.

The decision upheld a May 2018 ruling by U.S. District Judge Karon Bowdre that the public has “a common law right of access” to the records. Bowdre found that the execution protocol and related records “clearly concern a matter of great public concern, i.e., how Alabama carries out its executions,” the appeals court wrote in Monday’s ruling.