Ohio's prison system must produce records about lethal drugs it wants shielded from public view for justices on the state Supreme Court to review privately as part of an open records dispute, the court ruled.
At issue is a lawyer's request for multiple records about Ohio's lethal injection drugs, including who made them and when they expire, and whether a state secrecy law prohibits that information from release.
The high court ordered the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction on Dec. 29 to provide the records for justices to review within 10 days.
Among other disputed documents are correspondence related to Ohio's efforts to obtain those drugs, and correspondence from the prison system to or from any manufacturers.
The open records complaint was brought on behalf of Elizabeth Ochs, a Denver lawyer whose firm, Hogan Lovells, previously represented a Virginia death row inmate challenging the constitutionality of that state's lethal drugs. Killer Ricky Gray was executed in January 2017 for killing a family in 2006.