ABU-ALI ABDUR'RAHMAN, ET AL.
v.
TONY PARKER, COMMISSIONER, TENNESSEE DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, ET AL.
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Tennessee death-row inmates sought to challenge the state's execution procedures and secrecy laws that prevented them from obtaining information necessary to propose alternative execution methods, as required by prior Supreme Court precedent. Justice Sotomayor dissented from the Court's denial of certiorari, arguing that the requirement that inmates propose alternative execution methods is fundamentally unjust, particularly when combined with state laws that deny prisoners access to information needed to satisfy that requirement.
[1] Inmates are not required to offer alternative methods for their own executions.
[2] Secrecy laws that prevent death-row prisoners from obtaining information about the state's efforts to procure execution drugs create an injustice.
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I have already explained my opposition to the "perverse requirement that inmates offer alternative methods for their own executions." McGehee v. Hutchinson , 581 U.S. ----, ----, 137 S.Ct. 1275, 1276, 197 L.Ed.2d 746 (2017) (opinion dissenting from denial of application for stay and denial of certiorari); see generally Glossip v. Gross , 576 U.S. ----, ---- - ----, 135 S.Ct. 2726, 2761-2763, 192 L.Ed.2d 761 (2015). I have likewise addressed the added perversity of the secrecy laws that Tennessee imposes on death-row prisoners seeking to meet this requirement. See Zagorski v. Parker , 586 U.S. ----, ---- - ----, 139 S.Ct. 11, 202 L.Ed.2d 258 (2018) (opinion dissenting from denial of application for stay and denial of certiorari) (slip op., at 4-5) (discussing prisoners' inability to depose those with firsthand knowledge of the State's efforts to procure an alternative drug or to learn which sellers the State had contacted).
The Court has recently reaffirmed (and extended) the alternative-method requirement. See Bucklew v. Precythe , 587 U.S. ----, ---- - ----, 139 S.Ct. 1112, 1125-1129, --- L.Ed.2d ---- (2019). And today, the Court again ignores the further injustice of state secrecy laws denying death-row prisoners access to potentially crucial information for meeting that requirement. Because I continue to believe that the alternative-method requirement is fundamentally wrong-and particularly so when compounded by secrecy laws like Tennessee's-I dissent.
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