WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Various US states are concealing where they obtain lethal drugs to carry executions of death row inmates, Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty advocacy coordinator Marc Hyden told Sputnik on Thursday.
"As states struggle to acquire legal death penalty drugs, some states have turned toward keeping the source of their execution drugs a secret," Hyden stated. "Taxpayers in Arkansas and other states have every right to know how and where their governments are spending their hard earned money."
On Wednesday, Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge said the state’s Supreme Court has postponed indefinitely the executions of two convicted murderers scheduled for Wednesday.
The Arkansas Supreme Court issued its own stays of execution after striking down ones that had been authorized earlier by a judge in Pulaski County.
"Shrouding the state’s actions in secrecy is not the answer," Hyden argued. "It just begs the question, what are states like Arkansas hiding? What is happening in Arkansas is just another example of the death penalty’s broken nature."
Hyden noted that the US government is often covering up matters that make it look bad in the eyes of the public, but the practice runs counter to demands by citizens for transparency.
"Conservatives fear that government acting in secrecy may well be covering up its own mistakes and abuse," Hyden concluded. "This is not the transparent government that we demand."
Despite growing popular and legal pressure to scrap the death penalty across the United States, many US states still practice it.
More than 800 people have been executed in the United States in the past 15 years, according to the non-profit Death Penalty Information Center. The state of Texas has put to death 329 people since 2000.
In the first week of October, three convicted murderers were executed in three different US states.
