A federal judge ruled Tuesday that officials in Idaho prisons must leave media witnesses in executions as they prepare for deadly injections of drugs and manage a condemned person.

U.S. District Court Judge Debora K. Grasham ordered the Idaho Department of Corrections to provide audio and visual access to any executions that occur when advancing to the court in the League of News Agency's First Amendment Litigation. The Associated Press, Idaho politician and East Idaho News sued the state’s prison director in December and believed that the critical steps of the deadly injection process were unconstitutional in the public eye.

"While the case does involve the deadly injection execution procedure in Idaho, it also involves the public's First Amendment, which provides access to the state's most severe punishments to the state enforced by our state," Grasham wrote.

Grasham made it clear that her ruling did not make a policy judgment on the death penalty itself, but rather “trying to uphold constitutional rights belonging to the public in accordance with the First Amendment carried out by the state so that such policy decisions can be well understood.”

Grasham wrote that executions – including means and methods used to perform these – have historically been open to the American public. Today, media witnesses serve as surrogacy for the entire public by viewing and reporting the execution process.

The Idaho implementation agreement currently allows media witnesses to treat the condemned person as an execution room, place it on the gurney, and insert the IV into and attach it to the medical pipe and insert it into the medical pipe that leads to another room. Witnesses can also watch the condemned person die. However, the actual preparation and administration of lethal chemicals are carried out in another part of the facility, and the process is always hidden.

At a hearing earlier this month, Tanner Smith, a lawyer representing prison officials, said the public could rely on prison officials to tell them exactly whether drug preparation and management were successful. He also said that keeping the “drug room” hidden in the public eye helps protect the identities of volunteers who perform the work.

But Grasham said the state failed to explain why these volunteers could not protect their identities by using the same facial cover, gloves and hats, while executive team members used media witnesses who had worked. She wrote that prison officials failed to show that confidentiality was for legal criminal law, not “an exaggerated response.” Grasham also disagrees with prison officials that “the preparation and administration of lethal injections is the method of execution and the “minor details” of the execution process.”

"Indeed, the court struggled to think of a more important step in the execution process than the actions taken by the medical team in the medical team room, because without such action, the execution would not have happened."

Grasham also wrote that allowing witnesses to access the medical team’s preparation and drug management “does not extend the time witnesses spend in the witness room or require any changes to the procedures of the medical team members.”

A Associated Press reporter also pointed out that according to the judge's decision, the whole process is visible when the state exercises execution by hanging. The last execution of Idaho was hanged in 1957.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, twenty-seven states authorize the death penalty, although some states have stopped executions or no one is on death row. How many media witnesses are allowed in executions and how many procedures are allowed to see.

This is not the first time that the Associated Press and other news organizations have sued Idaho officials for increased enforcement visits. In 2012, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered prison officials to allow news agencies to view the first part of the fatal injection execution, including fixing it to Gurney when the condemned person was brought into the execution room and inserting an IV.

Idaho has been trying four fatal injection executions since the 1970s. Three of them were done, but recent attempts involved Thomas Eugene CreechAfter members of the executive team failed to successfully establish the IV line on Creech's arms and legs, they were miscarried last year.

Legislators passed a new law this year that will start next year, making the state's main way of execution a shooting.

Shooting squad execution Rare, but not unheard of, a few have been carried out in the United States over the past half century. Two of them happened in South Carolina This year marks the first U.S. shooting squad execution in 15 years.