AG: Keep execution team secret

The state attorney general’s office is asking for a law to keep the identity of the state’s execution team and the supplier of execution drugs secret.

Assistant Attorney General Jason Davis said the identity of the execution team needs to be protected.

“The only thing we have is an order from (late) Judge (Allen) Pepper,” Davis said of protecting the identity of the execution team and the pharmacy or pharmacists that supply the compound drugs used in lethal injections.

Davis said defense attorneys are using public records laws and filing lawsuits to try to gain such information.

“We are seeing this across the country,” Davis said. “They are going after expert witnesses and pharmacists as well.”

Davis said a pharmacy in Mississippi that had been supplying the state with the drugs quit doing so after its identity became known and a lawsuit was filed.

He said Mississippi has only four or five compound pharmacies capable of preparing specialty drugs.

Senate Bill 2543 says the identities of all members of the execution team, the supplier or suppliers of lethal injection drugs, and the identities of those witnesses shall at all times remain confidential and that the information is exempt from disclosure under the provisions of the Mississippi Public Records Act of 1983.

On Friday, the bill passed the Senate Corrections Committee, but it also has to pass the Senate Judiciary A Committee before it can come before the full Senate.

State Sen. Brice Wiggins, R-Pascagoula, said the bill gives him pause because “we do too many things that are confidential and secret.”

Wiggins, a former prosecutor, said he was leaning against supporting the bill until he heard the argument about protecting pharmacies and others from legal action.

“I believe these individuals could be targeted,” Davis said of those on the state’s execution team and the supplier of the drugs.

Mississippi Department of Corrections Commissioner Marshall Fisher, former head of the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics, said going after the names reminds him of witness tampering.

State Sen. Derrick Simmons, D-Greenville, said he doesn’t see the need for anyone to have the names of those on the execution team.

Contact Jimmie E. Gates at jgates@jackson.gannett.com or (601) 961-7212. Follow @jgatesnews on Twitter.