Lawyers crack me up. But not in a funny way.
The N&O reports today that the NC Supreme Court has taken up the matter of doctors "attending" executions.
I support capital punishment. But it's my opinion - and apparently the very belated position of the NC Medical Board - that doctors have no business being in this equation at all. If the state wants to kill someone, they need to find a way to do it that does not insert someone sworn to "first do no harm" into the dance of death.
It's a fact that doctors were put into the equation to make everyone (from lawyers, to legislators, to politicians, to judges, to just plain-ole-ordinary folk) feel better about killing someone. Death needed to be "clean" and painless (just like providing anesthesia - which the procedure currently mimics - albeit without ET tubes and using overdoses) in order to be constitutional. Get near the killer/rapist/whatever with an IV, and suddenly putting it in is "cruel and unusual" unless a doctor is doing it (a total load of hogwash).
The condemned murderer/rapist/whatever might blubber like a baby and we simply cannot have that.
Several justices this morning peppered the attorneys with questions during an hour-long hearing. Associate Justice Edward Thomas Brady very quickly challenged Todd Brosius, a lawyer for the medical board, on the legislature's intent in having a doctor present.
"The physicians are trained to save people," Brosius said at one point. "They are not trained to kill people."
[These lawyers are so eloquent aren't they?]
"Aren't they trained to detect pain and suffering?" Brady asked.
[Yes Judge, but the whole point of the "procedure" is to kill someone. Pssst. It hurts.]
Brady and other justices also challenged state Assistant Attorney General Joseph Finarelli, who argued that lawmakers meant for doctors to do more than attend and certify death.
[More like what? If the death-doctor does indeed "detect pain and suffering" WHAT are they supposed to do about it that does not then put them in the position of taking an active role in killing someone - something they take an Oath not to do?]
I do not understand why it is so hard to find a way to do this that does not involve the active participation of a doctor.
Of course, that might take the active participation of a doctor.
11/21 Update: This kind of case is the reason why I support the dealth penalty. Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Do it like Utah does. Use a firing squad of volunteers, and they have no shortage of volunteers in Utah.
Then the doctor gets to pronounce them dead to satisfy the legal types.
Guns. Noise. Blood. Messy. Not PC in 2008.
As I understand it, the current "clean" method of execution is loosely fashioned after "rapid sequence intubation" - albeit with no intubation and larger doses of paralytic and sedative . . . with a heart-stopping "punch" of potassium added.
Most of the problems have been either with the paralytic working and the sedative not (i.e. the condemned being fully awake but paralyzed as he/she dies) . . . or simply getting the IV in correctly (which does not require a doctor).
Without sounding too Mengelian, there are relatively easy ways to fix these problems. But there are too many lawyers in the pot. And the simple fact is that the argument over putting a doctor in this equation is a tactic - for both sides of the capital punishment issue.
On the one hand, it's about the people doing the killing keeping it "clean" - and feeling warm and fuzzy about the "humane" method they employ.
On the other hand it's about finding a way to stop executions altogether . . . setting impossible standards for what constitutes "cruel and unusual" . . . and then saying, "we can't do this without a doctor (a fallacy) . . . so we can't do it at all."
Post a Comment