Indiana law shrouds executions in secrecy, prompting new pushes for public oversight

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

65% : Prior to the change, some First Amendment advocates and death penalty experts call Indiana's lack of transparency during the gravest of government punishments alarming.
49% : The Journal-Gazette via AP)From public hangings in the town square to lethal injections witnessed by journalists, executions historically have mostly been carried out with at least some public scrutiny.
48% : "Media ensures government accountability and transparency in an otherwise closed and secretive process," Maher said.
46% : "To determine whether lethal injection executions are fairly and humanely administered, or whether they ever can be, citizens must have reliable information about the 'initial procedures' which are invasive, possibly painful and may give rise to serious complications.
43% : Formal descriptions of lethal injections by prison officials are sometimes sanitized compared with the detailed accounts offered by journalists.
41% : Wyoming has executed one person in the last half-century, killing Mark Hopkinson by lethal injection in 1992.
39% : Over the next 1,800 years, death sentences were often carried out by public crucifixion, drowning, beating, burning or impalement.
39% : Today the vast majority of the 27 states with capital punishment and the federal government recognize the need for public oversight via media witnesses.
33% : Federal executioners who put 13 inmates to death by lethal injection during the last months of the Trump administration likened the process to falling asleep, while reports by the AP and other outlets described how the condemned persons' stomachs shuddered as the pentobarbital took effect.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.