Doctors and Lethal Injection

By JUSTIN E. H. SMITH

In a recent ruling, Judge Malcolm Howard of the Federal District Court in Greenville, North Carolina, determined that the execution by lethal injection of Willie Brown Jr. may not proceed unless appropriate medical supervision of the process can be ensured. This ruling followed upon the presentation of evidence that all too often executioners without medical training do a poor job of administering the cocktail of chemicals required, and that as a consequence the prisoner often suffers needlessly.

North Carolina prison officials have been ordered to tell the court by this week how they will comply with its order requiring medically trained personnel to ensure that Brown is unconscious during his execution, currently scheduled for April 21. The officials have been asked a question they cannot possibly answer, and we can only hope that their conundrum will lead to a stay of execution for the prisoner.

As Adam Liptak reported recently in the New York Times ("Judges Set Hurdles for Lethal Injection," April 12, 2006), increasingly the drug protocol used nationwide since the 1970s --originally devised by the Oklahoma Department of Corrections in consultation with the state medical examiner-- is being denounced by critics as too complex and as medically unjustifiable.

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