'White out' glitch reveals lethal-injection pharmacy

NASHVILLE — After a fight all the way to the Tennessee Supreme Court to keep the names of people involved in executions private, attorneys say the state Department of Corrections has inadvertently released one of the names.

A bad "white out" job is to blame, according to attorneys for a group of death row inmates challenging the state's lethal injection protocol.

Supervisory Assistant Federal Public Defender Kelley Henry, who is working for the inmates, said during a court hearing Friday that her office has been making public records requests to the Department of Corrections since the case was filed in November 2013.

In records supplied by the department in December, the name of a pharmacy supplying the drug used in lethal injection executions can be read, Henry told Davidson County Chancellor Claudia Bonnyman.

Henry's boss, Federal Public Defender Henry Martin, sent an affidavit to the court saying the name was not properly redacted and was read by only one staffer before being sealed in an envelope and stored in a locked cabinet.

"We still don't know, quite frankly, whether we have the right to look at the contents of this envelope and use it in this (case)," Henry said.

Henry turned over the original document to the chancery court Friday. A spokeswoman for the Corrections Department said Friday she could not comment on the matter.