Indiana Shrouds Executions in Secrecy, Defying Long Tradition of Public Oversight

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

54% : The unusual secrecy is the result of state laws shielding information about the death penalty, and some First Amendment advocates and death penalty experts say the lack of transparency during the gravest of government punishments is alarming.Media witnesses play a crucial role in executions by providing the public with independent, firsthand and factual accounts of an execution, said Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC).
50% : Kris Cundiff, an Indiana attorney working with the Reporters' Committee for Freedom of the Press, said executions represent the "apex of government action.""Carrying out a death sentence is arguably the ultimate exercise of state power and state authority," Cundiff said.
48% : 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.
35% : That will not be the case in Indiana early Wednesday, when Joseph Corcoran is set to be put to death by lethal injection without any independent witnesses present.
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.

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