USA - Missouri. Judge Jon Beetem ordered the state to release key details about its supply of deadly chemicals

Judge Jon Beetem, sitting in the Missouri circuit court of Cole County, ordered the state to release key details about its supply of deadly chemicals, pending a further hearing on what information should be redacted. He ruled the state had "knowingly failed, at least in part" to comply with its obligation to act with transparency. The case was brought in May 2014 by the Guardian and media partners after they were denied information by the state of Missouri under its freedom of information laws. The Guardian, together with the Associated Press, the Kansas City Star, the St Louis Post-Dispatch and the Springfield News-Leader - had asked for details of the supply route of the drugs used by the state to kill prisoners as well as any quality controls applied to the chemicals. But the news outlets were turned down by the department of corrections on grounds of "institutional security". Fearing that public disclosure would frighten away pharmacies from making up, or compounding, lethal drugs to order, many states introduced secrecy rules. In Missouri's case, the department of corrections unilaterally revised its execution protocol in October 2013, to widen the net of secrecy. The Cole County ruling mirrored two other judgments issued concurrently by the same judge relating to similar challenges to Missouri's death penalty secrecy that had been brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.