Much ink has been spilled about the growing regime of secrecy surrounding the death penalty in this country. In 2018, the Death Penalty Information Center reported that “During the past seven years, states have begun conducting executions with drugs and drug combinations that have never been tried before. They have done so behind an expanding veil of secrecy laws that shield the execution process from public scrutiny.”

“Since January 2011,” the organization noted, “legislatures in thirteen states have enacted new secrecy statutes that conceal vital information about the execution process. Of the seventeen states that have carried out 246 lethal-injection executions between January 1, 2011 and August 31, 2018, all withheld at least some information about the about the execution process.”

Since that report was written, the regime of secrecy has tightened its grip on what the public gets to know about executions. We were reminded of that last month when the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld a South Carolina policy that "prohibits the publication of interviews between prisoners and the media or members of the public.”

The court’s decision aided and abetted a cover-up of the conditions and treatment of South Carolina prisoners and death row inmates. It eviscerated the First Amendment guarantee of press freedom and undermined the public’s ability to make informed decisions about the state’s correctional policies.

The state’s policy governing “Employee and Inmate Relations With News Media” does more than conceal information about the conduct of executions in South Carolina. It also

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