Families of executed prisoners want death penalty tapes made public

PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
..."After Eian came home that day with questions, his mother told him everything she could. But she didn't tell him that Virginia had made an audio recording of Gleason's execution behind the scenes. That's because she didn't know about it. No one had informed their family that prison employees recorded 31 execution tapes between 1987 and 2017 — including the one about Gleason.

Execution tapes are rare and have only been published twice before. In 2009, a judge ordered the Georgia Department of Corrections to release 19 execution tapes. Earlier this year, in January, NPR published four execution tapes from Virginia. Reporters found them after a former employee of the Virginia Department of Corrections donated them to the Library of Virginia's archives in 2006.

Cassette tapes obtained by NPR from the Library of Virginia contained audio recordings of the executions of four prisoners.
But when NPR discovered that the Department of Corrections had recorded more tapes, and asked to review them under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, the state denied the request — and took back the four tapes from the library.

NPR sued the state to obtain all 31 of the secret execution tapes. In the first hearing of that case, in August, an attorney for the Virginia attorney general's office argued that the state was holding the tapes back partly because they were confidential prisoner records. The state wanted to protect the privacy of the executed prisoners and their surviving family members, she indicated. The judge ruled in favor of the Department of Corrections.

But NPR spoke with members of six of the families of prisoners whose executions were recorded. They all said that no one had informed them about the tapes' existence before reporters reached out."...

I agree...I don't want to watch it but they are convicted criminals and the public paid to have it done so post them. Maybe if some folks watch them it will thwart some crime...I am against hanging but when we had hangings it drew crowds and guess what...there wasn't much crime. My great uncle watched the electrocution of a man that killed his brother in law in a heinous way. He was the family rep to make sure the sentence was carried out. He swore he would never watch that again for any reason.