(CN) - A law that lets Georgia keep the source of execution drugs confidential is constitutional and protects significant personal interests, the state's high court ruled.
The 5-2 decision Monday reverses a stay of execution granted to convicted murderer Warren Lee Hill.
Hill failed to show how the state's refusal to disclose the source of a drug to be used in his execution violated the constitutional ban against cruel and unusual punishment, the majority found. While the confidentiality statute keeps some aspects of Georgia's execution method from the public, "on balance, [it] plays a positive role in the functioning of the capital punishment process," the 33-page opinion states.
The dissent notes that confidentiality may undermine the public's faith in the integrity of the justice system, and may lead to botched executions, as happened last month with the execution of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma.
Hill, 44, is on death row in Jackson for killing a fellow inmate at Lee County Correctional Institute in 1990 with a nail-studded wooden sink leg.
Hill had been serving a life sentence at Lee County for the 1985 murder of his 18-year-old girlfriend, whom he shot 11 times. After Hill's multiple state and federal habeas petitions failed, the sentencing court scheduled his execution for the period of July 13-20, 2013. Georgia used a compounding pharmacy to get pentobarbital for Hill's planned execution, and declined to identify the source, citing a 2013 "execution-participant confidentiality statute." The law allows the state to keep secret the identities of people and entities involved in the execution process, including those who supply execution drugs.
Hill challenged the constitutionality of the statute, asking the Superior Court of Fulton County to stay his execution and order sealed discovery of the compounding pharmacy and its supply chain. He claimed that he needed to know the drug's source to allege cruel and unusual punishment under Georgia and federal law.
The court stayed Hill's execution, finding there was a substantial likelihood he would succeed on some of his constitutional challenges.
A majority of the Georgia Supreme Court found Monday, however, that the confidentiality statute is not unconstitutional, and that the stay of Hill's execution amounts to an abuse of discretion.
If dismissed as moot, the case could become "a classic example of a matter that is capable of repetition yet evading review," Justice P. Harris Hines wrote for the majority.
The challenged drug has since expired, but Georgia can get a new drug and refuse disclosure, leading the lower court to block its use on the same grounds, and the drug would expire once more before the Supreme Court could rule on appeal, according to the ruling.
The lower court also had valid, albeit limited jurisdiction over Hill's constitutional claims, the justices concluded. The type of drugs used during executions and how information about them is managed do not concern the validity of Hill's death sentence, which could be challenged only in the sentencing court. Instead, they merely concern how the death sentence is carried out, making superior court the proper venue for Hill's claims against state officers charged with carrying out the sentence, the court found.
Superior courts have the authority to enjoin state officers under their jurisdiction from using or directing the use of specific drugs in carrying out a death sentence, according to the ruling. They can also order state officers to disclose related information within their control, but they cannot stay execution orders by the sentencing courts, the majority concluded.