The Warden Is Busted: "Yes Sir, I Looked At The Urine"

More from the N&O on the contortions NC prison officials (and the doctors they employ) have utilized to side-step state statutes and medical ethical cannons that conflict with one another.

This time it's Marvin Polk, the warden of Central Prison in Raleigh (where inmates condemned to death get "the needle").

The warden of Central Prison testified in a deposition in November that a physician did not read a brain-wave machine to monitor inmates' consciousness during the state's past two executions.

The revelation in Marvin Polk's deposition raises questions about whether prison officials misled a federal judge. The judge allowed executions to proceed thinking a doctor would ensure that the inmates were fully sedated before being injected with lethal drugs.

Oh please. How dumb can a judge be (even a federal one)? This judge, dodging unpleasantness himself, knew exactly what would happen when he issued the order.

Defense lawyers (now considering "wrongful death" lawsuits and contempt citations) on "behalf" of condemned and/or already dead convicted inmates are "out-raged".

"When a judge is promised something and it turns out to be untrue, bad things happen," Beskind said.

Yeah sure. Whatever. Except when you live in Randolph County, dude. And if you're Bob Morrison or Steve Eblin and the newspapers are covering you tail (in the economic best interest of the community and all that), and the DA has no spine.

Why you can lie all day long in a court proceeding! The "rule of law" that some in our local blogosphere harp about means squat.

And absolutely nothing will be done about it.

Special Deputy Attorney General Thomas Pitman, who represents the prison system, responded to (Judge) Howard's ruling by stating prison officials had purchased the brain-wave monitor and a doctor and a nurse could observe it. However, Pitman never explicitly stated a doctor would monitor the inmate's consciousness.

Now this is rich, and actually reminds of a little dodge, I used to employ as a senior resident with my former Chairman on his daily rounds. In those days, we had a little lab on the pediatric floor . . . I have no idea if it's still there. When urines and other body fluids were collected, medical students (surpervised by residents) were supposed to have a go at looking at the urine under a microscope.

Now our Chairman was a bear who thrived on what I like to call "confrontational learning" (you either loved him or hated him for it . . . there was no in-between . . . and I loved him). You needed to know your stuff on rounds or he would eat you for lunch. The technique doesn't work for everybody, and I'm not sure it always served me well. But I became a master of the game of rounds. And as I climbed up in the ranks . . . from intern . . . to second year . . . to senior resident . . . I took great pride in protecting those in my charge who were not so good at the game.

I was Mama Bear.

Now, as a senior resident on the floor (or PICU or NICU or whatever), you've got tons of things to do while tucking patients in at night. Apart from actually examining and taking care of the patients admitted overnight (who are very sick or they would not be in the hospital in the first place) . . . things like checking and re-checking labs . . . discussing plans and treatments with the attending physicians (often at home in bed, and grumpy because you woke them up) . . . making sure the histories and physicals are dictated on the same night (a pet peeve of the Chairman) . . . and THEN (if you had the time), sitting down with the medical students and interns and trying to impart to them a small portion of your own very small knowledge.

Battling old, crickety equipment (which may or may not have worked on any given day) in a tiny lab which may or may not have been stocked was not high on my list of priorities . . . especially when you had a state-of-the-art lab downstairs . . . full of all kinds of fancy technology . . . and staffed with lots of very smart technicians who got a lot more sleep than interns & residents did and who were paid nicely to do the looking under the microscope.

One very busy night, a frustrated intern approached me (with a couple of equally frustrated medical students in tow). The microscope was not working and there were no decent slides to be found and . . . blah . . . blah . . . blah . . . blah. Could I stop what I was doing and help?

Bleary-eyed, I looked up from the case/project I was buried in and sighed heavily. I asked, "Do you have the urine?" The intern nodded, "Yes." "Do you have the report from the lab?", I asked. Again the intern nodded, "Yes". I nodded upwards, "See that flourescent light over our heads?" (at this point, the medical students were beginning to perk up). Again the intern nodded, "Yes". I smiled and rubbed my neck . . . which was aching from bending over a monster-chart on one of the hospital's frequent-flyers. "Well good then. Hold the urine up to that light and look at it. And if the chairman asks for the report, give him the lab results and be prepared to tell him what they mean. Because what they mean is what matters."

The intern squirmed and protested, "But he will ask me if I looked at the urine!"

"Yes, he will," I replied. And you will be able to truthfully say, 'Yes Sir, I looked at the urine'. Now, take five. Shake it off. And go get some coffee . . . for all of us. And let's spend some time talking about what we need to know for rounds."

The next morning the exchange happened exactly as I predicted . . . and the innocent ruse (which had no effect on the patient whatsoever) . . . worked.

In the case of the doctors at Central Prison, it doesn't work.

According to the state officials and the knowitall lawyers (on both sides and all levels) who put doctors in the execution chamber and would keep them there, the docs are supposed to be watching a moniter on "a patient" to ensure that he/she is unconscious and not suffering.

But, according to the Medical Board (and most doctors you might ask), the doctors really shouldn't really be there at all. But (of course), the Medical Board hasn't petitioned the legislature to change the law . . . or come up with a procedure that doesn't require a doctor to "attend" an execution as if he/she were attending a patient.

The real story is not the legal battle folks. It is the fundamental cowardice of the leaders of our state and my profession to address an issue head-on.

So the warden, stuck in the middle, and the physicians (whose livelihoods depend on being "team-players") developed their own ruse:

Just "be present" in the room. Look at the moniter from across the room . . . even if you cannot see what it's telling you.

In this case, they might be "present", but they're not being truthful about what is going on.

Raleigh lawyer Elizabeth Kuniholm, who represents one of the five inmates whose executions have been delayed, said hair-splitting semantics have no place in death penalty law.

"When you are talking about the most extreme penalty that the state can impose on someone," Kuniholm said, "this is not a time to be playing word games."

"Hair-splitting semantics and playing word games."

I am familiar with that too.