Florida Senate committee advances bill to shield records related to state executions

The Florida Senate is inching closer to more broadly shielding information about people or businesses involved in executions, a proposal that is drawing opposition from Catholic bishops and the First Amendment Foundation.

The Senate Rules Committee on Tuesday, approved the measure (SB 1204), teeing it up for consideration by the full Senate.

Bill sponsor Doug Broxson, R-Gulf Breeze, said the bill “ensures that the identity of manufacturers and retailers that supply lethal injection drugs to [the Department of Corrections] are exempt from disclosure.”

As a result, Broxson argued, the corrections department “will be able to obtain the drugs necessary to carry out their constitutional requirements.”

The state already has a public-records exemption to shield information about people such as executioners and the prescribers of drugs for lethal injections. The proposal would broaden that to cover people or entities involved in any step in the execution process.

The measure seeks to obscure the identities of anyone involved in “administering, compounding, dispensing, distributing, maintaining, manufacturing, ordering, preparing, prescribing, providing, purchasing, or supplying drugs, chemicals, supplies, or equipment” needed to carry out executions.

Sen. Gary Farmer, D-Lighthouse Point, criticized the bill.

“When we as a society are killing another human being, we should be absolutely open and transparent about that,” Farmer said, adding that dying by lethal injection is a “grueling death.”

But Broxson objected to Farmer’s comments.

“Let’s keep things focused on what we’re trying to do here. This is not a debate on the death penalty. It’s constitutional, and it’s something that the people have decided to do. This simply has to do with … the most humane way that we can terminate a person’s life. And overwhelmingly, the people who are making these decisions are the person whose life is at stake,” Broxson said.

Florida had 317 people on Death Row as of Tuesday, according to the Department of Corrections’ website.

Sen. Jeff Brandes, a St. Petersburg Republican who opposed the bill, said public-records exemptions should not be applied to executions.

“As somebody who believes in open public records, I think the place that we should be the most public and the most open is when we are taking a human life,” Brandes said.

Before Tuesday,, the measure had received unanimous support from senators in committee hearings.

Groups opposed to the exemption

Virginia Hamrick, a staff attorney with the First Amendment Foundation, argued that similar records exemptions in other states have not advanced the goals that Broxson described.

“Other states, including Texas, Tennessee and Georgia, have created an exemption for entities and drug manufacturers, and they’re still facing difficulties in acquiring these drugs,” Hamrick said. “So, withholding this information from the public has not achieved this purpose in other states.”

The records exemption proposed in the Senate bill would be applied retroactively. It drew opposition Tuesday from the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops, which has long fought against executions.

“We believe it is harmful to make secret the identities of individuals and entities whose drugs are bought and used for executions,” said Christie Arnold, a lobbyist representing the conference.

A similar House bill (HB 873) needs approval from the Judiciary Committee before it could be considered by the full House.

The measures would need a two-thirds vote to pass in the House and Senate, a threshold legally required for records exemptions.

(Disclosure: The News Service of Florida and the Miami Herald are members of the First Amendment Foundation.)

This story was originally published February 15, 2022 at 3:55 PM.