‘Dignity’ is a poor excuse for blocking press access to state executions

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Indiana law says that the press has no right to be present when the state carries out executions. It limits those who can attend to the warden of the prison where the execution is carried out, immediate family members of the crime victim, no more than five friends or relatives of the convicted person, the prison physician, and the prison chaplain.

Only if an inmate selects a member of the press as one of the five friends may they attend.

Last year, a coalition of news organizations sued in federal court, alleging that the state’s ban on press access violates the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of the press. On June 5, in a split decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled against them.

The opinion misreads the history of American executions and relevant Supreme Court precedents. Adding insult to injury, it claims that keeping the press from witnessing executions protects the “dignity” of the person being put to death. And its decision tees up a case for the Supreme Court to say once and for all that the First Amendment guarantees press access to executions.

Whereas other states limit the number of reporters who may witness an execution, as well as what parts of an execution they are allowed to see, Wyoming (which hasn’t executed anyone since 1992) is the only other state that does not allow press access to executions.

The news organizations that brought the suit in Indiana argued that executions have “been historically open to the public or its surrogates in the press, and [that] trustworthy first-hand accounts are of immense importance.” They point out that “Indiana’s total prohibition on access for the press to attend and witness executions is an outlier among death penalty states.”

As the Reporters Committee for a Free Press noted, “Last December, members of the press were prohibited from attending Indiana’s lethal injection of death row inmate Joseph Corcoran. … It was the first time the state had killed a prisoner in 15 years, and the first time it used a single drug — pentobarbital — to carry out an execution.”

One journalist, senior reporter Casey Smith of the Indiana Capital Chronicle, was able to attend, but only after being specifically invited by Corcoran. Since then, the Hoosier State has put two other men to death: Benjamin Ritchie in May 2025 and Roy Lee Ward in October. No member of the press saw either execution.

Indiana defends its limitations on access to executions by advancing the dignity argument that the Seventh Circuit embraced. In addition, it argues that because reporters remain free to publish whatever they wish, and the law treats the press no differently than it treats members of the public, there can be no First Amendment violation.

The Seventh Circuit majority bought both of those arguments, claiming that executions “have not ‘historically been open to the press and general public’ in many parts of the country for over a century.” Although it is true that executions are no longer carried out in public, even after they were brought inside prison walls, the press has almost always been part of the group that witnesses them, except in Indiana and Wyoming.

The court concluded that any benefits of press coverage of executions are outweighed by the harm done when “uninvited strangers with no immediate connection to the underlying crime … watch a prisoner die.” Such a practice, it added, “risks offending the dignity of their final moments.”

There is, of course, something odd about using the word “dignity” to describe what happens when the state kills one of its citizens, and about allowing the state that seeks to do that deed to speak for a condemned person. In dissent, Judge Candace Jackson-Akimumi seemed to understand that. She argued that freedom of the press and its right to have access to executions “does not depend on the government’s or defendant’s preferences.” In her view, “direct access by impartial individuals is necessary to ensure that accurate common neutral accounts of the execution reach the public.”

In addition, she pointed out that “Public access … helps incentivize government officials to adhere to standards of decency and reveal any issues that occurred during an execution.”

More than two decades ago, in 2002, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit offered an account of the value of allowing press witnesses to executions of the kind provided by Jackson-Akimumi. “Independent public scrutiny — made possible by the public and media witnesses to an execution — plays a significant role in the proper functioning of capital punishment.”

The Ninth Circuit concluded that restrictions on press access are “motivated at least in part by a desire to conceal the harsh reality of executions from the public.” That gets to the heart of the problem with what the Seventh Circuit is allowing Indiana to do.

We should not be taken in by its apparent solicitude for the dignity of the condemned.

Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College.

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Dignity

executions

first amendment

Indiana

Press access

United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit

witness

Wyoming

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