Lawyers from across Alabama have signed an open letter to Gov. Kay Ivey asking her to call for an independent review of the state’s execution process.

Executions in the state are on hold, following a November directive from Ivey to pause lethal injections while the state conducted an internal review of the process. The letter, distributed Thursday, is addressed to Ivey and Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner John Hamm.

“It is of utmost importance to Alabamians that the state use the time afforded by Governor Ivey’s order to get this right. We believe that this can best be aided through the thorough review of an independent investigatory body,” the letter states.

The letter, signed by more than 60 people working in criminal justice, calls for an independent group to investigate the state’s execution process, instead of an internal review board.

The letter included suggestions for investigating, but “we hope that this can be used to supplement whatever additional considerations are already in place for the investigation.”

Some of the questions included in the letter were about the qualifications of the people who set up intravenous lines for lethal injection drugs—a topic that’s been discussed in recent court filings from two men who were set to die in 2022 but survived after the prison system couldn’t set up an IV in time to proceed with the execution.

Other topics of concern included how the Alabama Department of Corrections gets its lethal drugs, after most drug companies announced years ago their refusal to sell chemicals that would be used in state executions.

Signers of the letter were attorneys, professors, policy advocates and more from across the state. Also included was at least one retired circuit judge.

“It is preposterous to believe that the agency responsible for botching multiple executions can responsibly and thoroughly investigate itself and suggest remedies to correct its own behavior,” said Alison Mollman, Senior Counsel for the ACLU of Alabama.

Mollman was one of the people who signed the letter, along with Middle District of Alabama Federal Defender Christine Freeman, Jefferson County Public Defender Adam Danneman, Montgomery County Public Defender Kiara Fiegi, Executive Director of Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice Carla Crowder, and more.

Read more: Alabama halts executions pending review; expert says investigation ‘needs to be independent’

“There is much information that can be learned from other conservative states that have done the important work of examining how our justice system carries out executions,” the letter states.

It included references to the investigation conducted into the Tennessee Department of Corrections’ execution protocol, called by Gov. Bill Lee.

Last year, Lee announced a moratorium similar to Alabama’s, but he called for an independent investigation into the state’s execution protocol. Neither the governor nor the state attorney general’s office predicted when executions would resume.

In a news release, Lee announced that the state would hire a former U.S. Attorney “to conduct a third-party review of Tennessee’s execution process after corrections officials failed to test execution drugs for bacterial endotoxins before (an) execution,” the Death Penalty Information Center reported. Lee also said the state would not go forward with the five remaining executions scheduled for 2022.