Analysis: When We Use the First Amendment for Bieber, Not the Death Penalty

Brennan Center for Justice's Andrew Cohen wrote in an opinion piece that "not a single national news organization has filed a single motion recently seeking to dissolve or at least diminish the great cloud of secrecy that has sprung up over the past few months over lethal injections in America." But several media organizations went to court to exercise their First Amendment rights to access the police videos of the arrest of Justin Bieber, he wrote.

There should be media efforts to gain information about lethal injections, especially as states are passing laws to restrict information about their death-penalty procedures, Cohen says: "In Georgia, for example, lawmakers last summer passed a secrecy law so broad that it precludes even the state’s own judiciary from having access to information about lethal injection drugs. It was immediately challenged by a death row inmate named Warren Lee Hill—who promptly got a trial judge to enjoin its enforcement—but no media organization that was asked to get involved in the litigation (and some were) chose to do so."

Cohen concludes that First Amendment rights are never more vital "than when the goverment seeks to execute someone in the name of the state--and seeks to do so in darkness."