[JURIST] The Maryland Court of Appeals [official website] ruled [PDF text] Wednesday that the state's lethal injection procedures are subject to the state's Administrative Procedures Act (APA) and therefore must be developed under the guidance of the Maryland attorney general, a legislative committee and with review and comment by the public unless the legislature acts to explicitly exempt lethal injection protocol from the APA. The majority of the court wrote:

we hold that those aspects of the [Executions Operations Manual] that direct the manner of executing the death sentence - the Lethal Injection Checklist - constitute regulations under SG 10-101(g) and, because they were not adopted in conformance with the requirements of the APA, are ineffective and may not be used until such time as they are properly adopted.