The state Records Committee ruled that the Department of Corrections should turn over a range of documents, from the process for selecting execution "team" members to any written reviews and performance of the team following an execution.

The committee voted 3-2 to make those documents public, after portions identifying execution participants or giving away security secrets were blacked out. At the same time, the panel rejected attorney Ken Murray's request for other records, including handbooks, training manuals and the personnel files and employment files of execution team members.

The split decision may well be appealed to 3rd District Court "because of the extreme seriousness of the issue," assistant Attorney General Sharel Reber said after the hearing.

The state argued the documents requested were exempt from open-records laws and outside the jurisdiction of the committee because of security risks associated with their release.

Lives are at stake, argued Tom Patterson, Corrections executive director. "Certainly a death row inmate has nothing to lose, so we have to plan for the worst," he said.

"Some of them have said they will take out an officer before they go down," said Reber, adding that before a scheduled execution, inmates call officers "murderers."

Any identifying leak of an execution participant's identity, she said, would mean "a death warrant."

Murray, an assistant federal public defender representing Lafferty, said he had no interest in compromising prison security, but said there is an overriding societal concern in being able to scrutinize the state's execution process and procedures.

"Government has to be held accountable for the decisions it makes," he said in an interview after the hearing. "If they're doing it right then there's nothing to hide."

But, said Murray, "there have been problems across the country, especially with lethal injections. . . . We want to make sure if this is done, it is done in a manner that is humane and consistent with our societal standards."

In a general summary of Utah's execution procedures prepared for the governor and released to Murray, the attorney found a serious discrepancy with standard procedures for lethal injections. Instead of a muscle-relaxing drug being administered prior to a deadly dose of heart-stopping potassium chloride, the document indicates it is given after the lethal chemical.

Tom Anderson, a Corrections official who helped prepare the document, said it was a simple clerical error, and assured that the drugs are administered in proper order.

But he also acknowledged that changes to the procedure may have been made subsequent to those detailed in the document.

"We still don't know how they do it in Utah," said Murray. The document made public "raised more questions than it answers."