Frankfurt – Kentucky may not execute anyone until it adopts regulations in compliance with the law, the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.
The court ruling came in the case of three Death Row inmates – Thomas C. Bowling, Ralph Baze and Brian Keith Moore – who were challenging the state’s lethal injection protocol.
Bowling was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1990 murders of a husband and wife as they were parked in their car outside their dry cleaning business in Lexington.
Baze was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1992 murders of two police officers who were attempting to serve five fugitive warrants on him in Powell County.
Earlier this week, Attorney General Jack Conway asked Gov. Steve Beshear to set an execution date for Baze and two other men on Death Row.
Meanwhile, the state’s top public defenders, a leading anti-death-penalty group and a group of lawyers sought a moratorium on executions until a recently organized American Bar Association review of the implementation of the death penalty in Kentucky is completed in about 12 to 18 months.
In its 35-page ruling, the court said the state Department of Corrections must follow state-mandated administrative procedures before adopting the current lethal injection process of a three-drug cocktail.
It also said the state should have held public hearings on the process.
“The Department of Corrections is required by Kentucky law to promulgate a regulation as to all portions of the lethal injection protocol except those limited issues of internal management that are purely of concern to department personnel,” the high court said.
It identified “limited issues of internal management” as identities of the execution team, storage location of the drugs and other security-related issues.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.