Media and witnesses may view executions in their entirety, so says a federal judge in San Francisco, overturning California’s prison policy of allowing people to watch lethal injections only after the deadly chemicals begin flowing. The suit was filed in 1996 by news organizations challenging the state’s policy of keeping a curtain drawn in the death chamber while the prisoner is led in and strapped down and needles and tubes are inserted. The media groups claim those procedures are part of the execution process that should be visible to witnesses and argued that the state was effectively preventing the public from learning what happens in an execution.