Doctors’ boycott renews debate on death penalty
LOS ANGELES – The refusal of medical professionals to take part in the scheduled execution of a convicted killer in California this week has reopened the debate over whether lethal injection is a constitutional means of capital punishment – and, inevitably, over capital punishment itself.
Since 1977, most state legislatures have adopted lethal injection as the preferred means of execution, believing it more humane and more socially acceptable than the gas chamber or the electric chair. But death row inmates are increasingly challenging lethal injection as a violation of the ban on cruel and unusual punishment, experts said, just as they challenged those other methods in the past.
Medical associations and ethicists are united in the opinion that physicians should not be involved in executions in any way. So there was widespread support Wednesday for the eleventh-hour refusal of several medical professionals to aid in the scheduled execution of Michael Morales, condemned to die for a brutal murder 25 years ago. The execution is now on hold pending a hearing in May.
“They made the right decision,” said Dr. Jeffrey Apfelbaum, an anesthesiologist at the University of Chicago Hospitals. “We (physicians) are dedicated to preserving life whenever there’s hope to do so. To take away life, or contribute to that, runs completely contrary to what we dedicate our lives to do.”
Experts say there is an inherent conflict in using what most people think of as a medical procedure to kill criminals.
“On the one hand, we want the most humane method of execution,” said Deborah Denno, a law professor at Fordham University. “To ensure that it’s humane, we need a qualified person to carry it out – someone with a certain amount of medical training. But on the other hand, the medical profession has consistently balked at playing any kind of role.”
Lethal injection was first proposed in 1888, said Denno, but the medical community “reacted very strongly. As a result, electrocution was adopted.
Most states don’t require doctors to attend executions. On Tuesday, the California Medical Association said it was sponsoring similar legislation.
The move came after two unidentified anesthesiologists backed out of an agreement to monitor Morales’ consciousness during his scheduled execution early Tuesday to satisfy the order of a federal judge.
Attorneys for Morales had argued that lethal injection would violate Morales’ 8th Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment, because it was possible he could still be conscious when his heart stopped pumping.
Morales, 46, was convicted of killing, raping and torturing a 17-year-old girl 25 years ago.
Following his attorneys’ appeal, U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel offered the state three options: stay the execution pending a hearing, use a lethal injection of barbiturates alone, or use the standard three-drug “cocktail” but have an anesthesiologist monitor whether Morales was unconscious prior to the administration of the lethal drug.
In the three-drug cocktail the first drug knocks the inmate out, the second paralyzes him and the third stops his heart.
The state chose the cocktail. At the last minute, however, the anesthesiologists declined to oversee his sedation on ethical grounds.
The state then decided to put Morales to death using a lethal dose of a barbiturate, but a spokesman for San Quentin State Prison said the prison could not find a nurse, doctor or other licensed medical professional willing to administer it, in line with Fogel’s order. The execution is now on hold.
Recent studies, including one published last spring in The Lancet, a British medical journal, have cast doubt on whether the first drug in the cocktail effectively prevents the person from feeling pain.