USA - Louisiana. Louisiana must reveal details of its lethal injection protocol, a federal judge ruled

Louisiana must reveal details of how it plans to kill 2 death row inmates, a federal judge ruled today in Baton Rouge. The ruling was a rebuff to the state Department of Safety and Corrections, which was trying to keep its lethal injection protocol under seal. In his ruling, U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen Riedlinger rejected the state’s argument that revealing the lethal injection protocol would raise "serious security concerns." "Defendants' motion is not supported by any affidavit or other evidence providing even 1 example of improper interference with an execution caused by or related to the dissemination of the current or any previous Louisiana execution protocol, or which shows that the defendants’security concerns and the asserted risk of manipulation are more than mere speculation or conjecture," Riedlinger's ruling stated. The judge ordered the state to turn over the protocol to defense attorneys within 14 days. Riedlinger's ruling was on a motion in connection with a federal lawsuit filed in December, in which death row inmate Jessie Hoffman sued Governor Bobby Jindal and various members of the Louisiana Department of Safety and Corrections. Hoffman is sentenced to die for the 1996 kidnapping, rape and murder of Mary "Molly" Elliot. In February, death row inmate Christopher Sepulvado joined Hoffman's suit. Sepulvado was convicted of torturing and murdering his 6-year-old stepson in 1992. Both plaintiffs assert that the principle of due process requires that they be fully informed how the state intends to execute them. Sepulvado's attorneys had been trying to get the state to turn over the lethal injection protocol since before the convicted killer joined Hoffman's case. In court proceedings to date, the state had revealed only that it was abandoning a 3-drug cocktail used in previous lethal injections and turning to a 1-drug protocol for Sepulvado's execution. Citing public records law, The Lens asked for expiration dates and current inventory records of pentobarbital, the drug the state said it planned to use. Nembutal, the type of pentobarbital the state said it bought, has a maximum 3-year shelf life, according to Lundbeck, the company that manufactured the drug when Louisiana bought it in May 2011.