PRESS AND PUBLIC HAVE A FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHT TO OBSERVE EXECUTIONS WITHOUT A CHEMICAL CURTAIN, SAYS ACLU


For Immediate Release: March 8, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO – A chemical curtain is preventing the press and public from being fully informed about executions, violating their First Amendment rights according to a lawsuit filed today in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California by the ACLU of Northern California. The ACLU-NC is representing Pacific News Service (PNS).

PNS seeks a permanent injunction to prevent the California Department of Corrections (CDC) and San Quentin State Prison from using the paralytic drug pancuronium bromide (also known as Pavulon) during executions because it conceals significant information to which the public is constitutionally entitled.

"The drugs that the State uses to carry out executions put up what amounts to a chemical curtain that hides what really goes on in the death chamber,” said Jon Streeter, ACLU-NC cooperating attorney with the law firm of Keker & Van Nest, LLP. “In the name of freedom of the press, we are demanding that the State take that curtain down.”

The state of California uses a three drug combination to carry out executions: first, sodium pentothal, a short-acting barbiturate; second, pancuronium bromide, a drug which paralyzes all voluntary muscles; and third, potassium chloride, which causes cardiac arrest. The lawsuit filed today focuses on the second drug, stating that it serves no legitimate purpose in the execution.
In an earlier ACLU case, CFAC v. Woodford, decided in 2002, the federal courts held that the actual curtain that was used at the first lethal execution in California “was motivated at least in part by a desire to conceal the harsh reality of executions from the public.”

“Today we have the same First Amendment concern in this case – that this chemical curtain does nothing more than sanitize the process by preventing the press and the public from being accurately informed about how the State is implementing its ultimate penalty, ” said Alan Schlosser, ACLU-NC Legal Director.

The method and the drug combination used in California to implement the death penalty are currently the subject of a lawsuit in federal court in San Jose, Morales v. Woodford, which claims that California’s procedures constitute cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment.