State of Virginia Corrections: Capital Punishment Tapes Should Remain Secret

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The Virginia Department of Corrections has recorded audio of at least 30 executions over the last three decades, but it has no plans to release the tapes publicly. The department rejected an Associated Press request under the state's public records law to release the recordings after NPR obtained and reported on four of them.​

https://news.yahoo.com/virginia-doc-says-execution-audio-145406712.html

The age-old debate is unresolved.
Are government criminal penalties to punish, or to deter?

We need not pick a side in that debate to acknowledge that keeping this evidence secret has consequences.

a) Rightly or wrongly it presents the impression the government policy makers responsible for this evidence being kept secret from the tax payers that fund it are ashamed of it, that they deem it something to hide.

b) Even if deterrence is not the primary intended purpose of criminal penalties, what is to be gained by defeating that constructive deterrent component of this most serious of all government penalties?

Capital punishment itself is under scrutiny. Many of our commercial trading partners and military allies have abandoned it, excluded it from their criminal justice protocol.

Is the U.S. the barbarian among them? Both continuing the practice in some States, and keeping the potentially deterrent evidence secret?

 

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Rightly or wrongly it presents the impression the government policy makers responsible for this evidence being kept secret from the tax payers that fund it are ashamed of it, that they deem it something to hide.

When your history (and actions) are so bad you don't want people to see them.

 

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When your history (and actions) are so bad you don't want people to see them.

American history includes severe abuses of children by the Catholic church, and other major actors.
It was shameful.
Those shamed by it have substantially discontinued or modified the abuse, at least to within contemporary tolerance.

In this Virginia case they may be ashamed of it, BUT !! not ashamed enough to terminate or substantially modify the shame they're keeping from public review.

If you make a mistake
and you know it's a mistake
and you do not correct your mistake
you have made two mistakes.

Chinese aphorism

Seems to me Virginia is somewhere between Franz Kafka & Gahan Wilson on this.

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The notion of nuclear military weapons is as a deterrent. If not optimal, at least it's rational, provided potential military adversaries KNOW.

What sense then for Israel to both have nuclear weapons, while simultaneously denying Israel has them?

Some significant segment of public opinion may be that the electric chair is a quick, humane form of dispatch. Some experts, including those that have witnessed such execution report it is not. Citizens convicted of murder simply don't seem to have a constituency sufficient to address this.

note:
Illinois Gov. George Ryan commuted the death sentences of every prisoner on Illinois death row. Shortly thereafter Ryan was himself removed from office for unrelated reason.