A US judge is requiring California prison officials to show executions in their entirety - from the moment a condemned prisoner is escorted to the death chamber to the final injection of lethal chemicals.
US District Judge Vaughn Walker, in a decision made public yesterday, left intact his July decision overturning a state law that kept witnesses such as journalists and victims from seeing anything but the final part of an execution when the inmate is already strapped to a table.
State Department of Corrections officials had argued the curbs were needed to protect the identities of those carrying out executions.
A coalition of media and civil liberty groups sought to make the entire process public.
Judge Walker ruled that prison staff could conceal their identities by wearing surgical masks and that it served the public interest to witness a process in its entirety that critics say constitutes cruel punishment.
The decision opens the way for the public to view the full execution of killer Robert Massie on March 27th.
The public has a keen interest in witnessing the manner by which government wields its most devastating power, the power lawfully to take a life, Judge Walker wrote in the decision.
Mr Russ Heimerich, a Department of Corrections spokesman, said the state would file an appeal to try to block the ruling before Massie's execution.
Massie was sentenced to die for killing a San Francisco off-licence owner in 1979.
In prior executions the department kept a curtain lowered until the condemned prisoner was strapped to a trolley with needles and tubes inserted and all guards departed from the death chamber.