August 14, 2007

North Carolina

Death rules

A state judge's ruling highlights an ongoing conflict involving the death
penalty, whose use properly is on hold

News & Observer, Editorial

Whether they want to do so or not, North Carolina leaders once again are
having to debate the state's death penalty. A ruling by a state
administrative law judge opens another chapter on the controversy involving
lethal injection, its potential to become an unacceptably painful means of
execution, and the permissible role of doctors in carrying out the death
sentence.

Judge Fred G. Morrison Jr. ruled last week that the Council of State, made
up of North Carolina's top statewide elected officials, should have heard
arguments from both sides before it approved a new protocol for capital
punishment last February. Perhaps so, in the sense that it's usually good
for decision-makers to factor in all the relevant information. Still, the
council was not designed, nor is it expected to function, as a court.

With the state's expected appeal, the same issues heard by Morrison will be
considered again in Superior Court. The courts are likely in any event to be
where the issue will finally be decided, because of conflicting laws and
rulings that have caused the state's use of the death penalty to be
unofficially suspended.

The questions at hand are whether the cocktail of drugs used to killed
inmates might, in some situations, lead to an unconstitutionally cruel,
painful death, and whether doctors can take part in the procedure without
trampling a foundational tenet of the profession -- to do no harm.

The N.C. Medical Board, the state's disciplinary body for doctors,
appropriately has established a policy banning doctors from taking part in
executions, except to be present as required by law when executions are
carried out. Morrison, in fact, took an unnecessary swipe at the board in
his ruling, noting that the death penalty is established state policy. It's
true that board members pledge to abide by the state constitution, but their
conduct still must be in keeping with professional ethics.

When the state's execution protocol was challenged by death row inmates,
federal District Judge Malcolm Howard agreed that executions could proceed,
provided that medical personnel were on hand to ensure that the condemned
person had been rendered completely unconscious before the painful,
death-dealing drugs were administered. The state ensured Howard that it
would follow that procedure, and he allowed two men to be executed on that
basis.

But the prison doctor on duty testified that he had not participated in
monitoring an inmate's vital signs, using a special brain monitor the state
had obtained for that purpose. Morrison noted that the monitor was not
intended to be used by people without medical training.

Morrison's findings confirmed, essentially, the state's lack of compliance
with the terms laid down by Howard. And they illustrated the conflict
between the state's protocol, meant to guard against an unconstitutionally
painful execution, and the medical board's rule against a doctor taking part
in any way.

It is a conflict for which there is no obvious resolution -- and with the
conflict unresolved, the state has good reason to keep executions on hold.

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Source : News & Observer, Editorial

http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/edi ... 69622.html