A Missouri death row prisoner is seeking to have his execution captured on videotape for potential evidence of cruel and unusual punishment. Russell Bucklew is set to die this week for a 1996 murder. Bucklew’s attorneys want the execution filmed in case he survives and wants to pursue legal action, or if he dies and his state wants to file a claim. They argue his chances of suffering a painful death are heightened by a rare medical condition that has left him with vascular tumors partially blocking his airway. A doctor who examined Bucklew says he will be “at great risk of choking and suffocating.” A botched execution in Oklahoma last month left the prisoner writhing in pain on the gurney before dying 45 minutes later of a heart attack. Steven Hawkins of Amnesty International said videotaping would help lift the veil of secrecy surrounding executions.

Steven Hawkins: “At this point, there have been journalistic accounts of people writhing, accounts of people saying they can’t breathe, and just when it gets bad, the state closes the curtain. We want to stop that curtain from being closed so that the public can see firsthand just how barbaric, how torturous executions are, even under these so-called humane lethal injection procedures.”

A lawsuit filed by several media outlets last week called on Missouri to disclose the “type, quality and source” of lethal injection drugs.