Rep. Lynn Greer, R-Rogersville, sponsored the bill, which would allow the state to hide the names of people involved in an execution, as well as the drugs used in lethal injection and the suppliers of those drugs. The bill passed the House 77-19 earlier this month.
Greer has told lawmakers the bill needs to pass to protect the state's supply of lethal injection drugs. Boycotts by European countries and shortages in the U.S. market have states struggling to maintain supplies of key parts of their lethal injection cocktails. Oklahoma announced Tuesday that it would postpone the executions of two inmates because that state's corrections department doesn't have enough drugs to carry them out, according to the Associated Press.
Supporters of Alabama's death penalty secrecy bill say keeping the names of drug suppliers secret would protect them from repercussions from death penalty opponents. Those names aren't protected now, Greer has said.
"Today there is nothing under Alabama law that makes that information confidential," Greer said in a committee meeting last month.
The Star made a request, more than two weeks ago, to the Alabama Department of Corrections for receipts for any lethal injections bought by the department, as well as receipts for any services rendered by medical professionals administering the drugs or records of volunteers participating in executions.
Corrections officials have said The Star's request is in line behind other requests for death penalty and prison information.
"We are currently working on your request and hope to have a response to you soon," Kristi Simpson, legal assistant to DOC general counsel Anne Hill, told The Star in an email Tuesday.
DOC officials haven't responded to The Star's questions, via email, about how many records requests are in line ahead of The Star, or who made them.
At least some of those requests, however, are from the Southern Poverty Law Center, a Montgomery-based nonprofit civil rights law firm. Maria Morris, a lawyer for the SPLC, said the group has several requests for documents pending with the department, though none is related to lethal injection drugs. Some of the requests have been pending since October, she said.
"They only have one person clearing these requests," Morris said.
Officials of the Federal Defenders' Office in Montgomery said they didn't have public records requests pending with the department. Still, the office — which represents defendants in federal cases, including some death penalty appeals — did request death penalty procedure information through the courts in a case dating back to 2012, a lawyer at the office confirmed.
"While many States make their execution protocols publicly available, (the) defendants keep their lethal injection protocol confidential and offer no justification for keeping it from public view," assistant federal defender John Palombi wrote in a complaint against the state filed on behalf of death row inmate Carey Dale Grayson.
Grayson was scheduled for execution on April 12, 2012. The complaint, filed on April 6, 2012, alleged that Grayson was scheduled to be executed "using a lethal injection protocol that is developed in secrecy, not consistently followed, and not subject to any oversight except through court action."
Grayson was not executed in 2012 and the case is still pending. In their response to the suit, state officials said Grayson's complaint was "virtually identical" to suits filed by inmates Jason Williams, Eddie Powell and Thomas Arthur. Inmate Demetrius Frazier attempted to join in Grayson's case last year, but courts told him he'd have to file a suit on his own.
Williams, who was executed in May 2011, was the first Alabama inmate to be executed with a cocktail including the drug pentobarbital. Court records show Williams had written a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder asking for an investigation into how the state acquired sodium thiopental, then the first drug in the cocktail, from Tennessee.
A week later, court documents indicate, the Drug Enforcement Agency seized the state's sodium thiopental and announced the switch to pentobarbital.
The same month Williams was executed, Eddie Powell filed a complaint challenging the pentobarbital cocktail as an untried method, developed without proper oversight.
"Defendants conduct activity surrounding Alabama's method of execution behind a veil of secrecy," Powell's lawyers wrote in a complaint filed in May 2011.
Powell was executed a month later.
Greer's bill is scheduled for a vote in the Senate Health Committee today. Approval by committee would move it on to the full Senate.
Read more: Anniston Star - Inmates seek death drug info as secrecy bill approaches vote