USA - Georgia. Supreme court upholds anonymity for execution pharmacists

Georgia supreme court upholds anonymity for execution pharmacists. The Georgia supreme court today upheld a state law granting anonymity to pharmacists who supply drugs for lethal injections. The news was a setback for Warren Hill, an intellectually disabled man on death row in the state. Hill's case has been marked by controversies over his disability and changes the state has made to the drug cocktail it uses to execute prisoners. Hill's execution was last put on hold in July 2013, when a lower Georgia court ruled that the state's drug secrecy law was unconstitutional. The Fulton County superior court said that by withholding from Hill crucial details about the source and nature of the drugs that were to be used to execute him, the state was causing him "irreparable harm". On Monday the state supreme court, in a 5-2 ruling, dismissed that argument. The court ruling rejected the argument of Hill's lawyers that anonymous sourcing of execution drugs increased the risk of drug contamination and, thereby, of cruel and unusual punishment. For the majority, justice Harris Hines wrote: "Particularly unpersuasive is Hill's expert's testimony that certain contaminants also could have the following effect: 'Their blood pressure would drop precipitously, and ultimately it's possible that they could die.' Justice Hines dismissed the risk of complications in the lethal injection procedure raised by potential lack of drug sterility or by contamination: "The fact remains that sterility is simply a meaningless issue in an execution where, as the record showed, unconsciousness will set in almost instantaneously from a massive overdose of an anesthetic, death will follow shortly afterward before consciousness is regained, and the prisoner will never have an opportunity to suffer the negative medical effects from infection or allergic reactions from a possibly non-sterile drug." "Such a side effect obviously would be shockingly undesirable in the practice of medicine, but it is certainly not a worry in an execution." The timeline established by Monday's ruling for Hill's execution was unclear. The court noted that the order for the drugs initially approved by the state for the execution, and the drugs themselves, had expired.