Deborah Denno comments to TruthOut on how execution by lethal injection has shone a harsh light on the complicity of health professionals – physicians, nurses and paramedics – in carrying out capital punishment.
Deborah W. Denno JD, PhD, a leading scholar of death penalty litigation at the Fordham University School of Law in New York City, remarked that physician participation in executions is more prevalent than one might think, although exact numbers are not available because of the secrecy surrounding executions.
A state-by-state review by Amnesty International three years ago found that most death-penalty states either “allow” or “require” physicians to participate in executions, but their specific duties are not spelled out.
These duties may be buried in regulations – addenda to the laws themselves – and Professor Denno notes that it could take years to get these data via the Freedom of Information Act. What we can say is that the duties range from consulting to carrying out the execution.
Ideally, health professionals and death row lawyers will find a way to work together, with one group declining to be complicit in executions and the other pressing for more medically accomplished executions, thereby catching the criminal justice system in a whipsaw effect.
That is admittedly a long shot, for just as law schools will continue to churn out prosecutors and judges who “believe” in the death penalty, so the research of Professor Denno and others show that there is no shortage of health professionals prepared to take their place beside the death gurney.
Read the entire TruthOut story.