NCJ Number
77366
Journal
New England Journal of Medicine Volume: 302 Issue: 4 Dated: (January 24, 1980) Pages: 226-230
Date Published
1980
Length
5 pages
Annotation
This article examines the ethical, legal, and clinical concerns regarding medical participation in capital punishment by intravenous drug injection.
Abstract
Four States have passed legislation that adopts this new method of capital punishment. Oklahoma, Texas, Idaho, and New Mexico. Other States are considering such programs. Medical professional participation in these programs can involve a variety of roles, from ordering the substance and preparing it for injection, to injecting the substance or ordering and supervising the injection by other medical personnel, to monitoring the administration and observing the prisoner throughout the continuous injection of the drug and lastly, to examining the prisoner and pronouncing the death. Both internationally recognized principles condemning capital punishment and the Hippocratic Oath's definition of physicians as healers who would never kill or harm their patients mitigate against physician involvement in this form of capital punishment. In addition, these ethical principles would make it improper also for physicians to train persons to perform inhumane treatment or punishment, even if the physicians possessed the skills and knowledge to provide the training. To be both present and performing a monitoring role is, in fact, worse because the physician then becomes the instrument to stop the lethal action itself. Finally, it is disturbing that this method, viewed as less cruel than other methods of capital punishment should, by its availability, encourage the more extensive application of the death penalty and its recommendation by lay juries in the criminal courts. Over 20 footnotes are provided.