California doctors walk out of execution NRR
funkyexample
915 Posts
This is a genius way to protest against capital punishment. I can definitely forsee some cruel and unusual punishment lawsuits if this goes down tonight.http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-morales21feb21,0,246025.story?coll=la-home-headlinesExecution of Killer-Rapist Is Postponed After Doctors Walk OutCourt-ordered anesthesiologists refuse to participate in the process, citing ethical concerns.By Louis Sahagun and Tim Reiterman, Times Staff WritersSAN QUENTIN -- The scheduled execution of convicted murderer-rapist Michael Morales was postponed this morning after court-ordered anesthesiologists refused to participate in the process. The prison warden abruptly changed plans and announced that the inmate would be executed with a lethal dose of barbiturates.At 2:55 a.m., Warden Steven Ornoski announced that the prison indends to carry out the execution at 7:30 p.m. today with an unprecedented single dose of sodium pentothal, a lethal barbiturate, rather than the standard three-chemical potion. Injecting Morales with five grams of barbiturates was expected to lengthen the execution from the usual 11 minutes to as long as 45 minutes.A week ago, U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel responded to defense claims that lethal injection violated a constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment by offering three options: A lethal injection of only barbiturates; having an anesthesiologist on hand to ensure Morales was unconscious when the standard three-chemical injection was administered; or a stay of the execution pending a hearing.State corrections officials chose the second option, and had two doctors ready to proceed with the execution as planned at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday.After serious differences of opinion with the anesthesiologists, Ornoski asked his staff to stand down on the execution at about 2 a.m.The doctors' withdrawal came at the end of hasty legal maneuvering in U.S. District Court, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court. But it was the language in an opinion rendered Monday by the appellate court that had the court-ordered anesthesiologists in mutiny.The doctors' concerns hinged on the ethics of returning an inmate to consciousness in the event of a botched lethal injection.Doctors said the ruling raised serious questions about the possibility of having to intervene in the execution "if any evidence of either pain or a return to consciousness arose."In a statement to the warden, the doctors said, "Any such intervention would be medically unethical. As a result, we have withdrawn from participation in this current process. ... What is being asked of us is ethically unacceptable."The death warrant for Morales expires at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday. If the execution is not carried out before then, a Superior Court judge would have no more than 60 days to set another execution date.Morales was returned to his cell on death row, and prison officials declined to describe what the inmate only thought was his last meal.The family members of the victim were leaving San Quentin and "trying to gather themselves," prison spokesman Vernell Crittendon said.The anticipated execution at San Quentin State Prison followed a last-minute clemency campaign fraught with controversy and highly unusual legal twists and turns.Morales, 46, was convicted of the brutal 1981 slaying of Terri Winchell, a 17-year-old Lodi high school senior. He admitted conspiring with his cousin, Rick Ortega, to kill Winchell as payback for her dating Ortega's bisexual lover. But he said he accepted responsibility for the crime and was deeply remorseful.He was set to become the 14th man and the first Latino executed by the state of California since capital punishment was reinstated in 1978.He also was to be the third inmate executed in California in 10 weeks, and the fifth to whom Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has denied clemency since he took office two years ago.Morales' defense team had argued that the state's three-stage lethal injection protocol violated a constitutional ban on "cruel and unusual punishment," claiming that the initial rounds of sedatives and paralytic agents might mask, rather than prevent, pain from the final heart-stopping chemicals.After studying the medical logs of executed inmates, Fogel agreed that the procedure was prone to error and recommended having a doctor present to make sure Morales was rendered unconscious before the final dose. His ruling applies, however, only to the Morales execution.Defense attorneys asked the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to stop the execution on the grounds that Fogel's remedy was untested and had not been subjected to legal, medical or administrative reviews. The altered procedure was also protested by physician groups, including the American Medical Assn., on the grounds that it contradicted a doctor's Hippocratic oath to prevent harm.
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I dont think the doctors were necessarily protesting the death penalty, just their involvement in this specific execution.
"The doctors' concerns hinged on the ethics of returning an inmate to consciousness in the event of a botched lethal injection.
Doctors said the ruling raised serious questions about the possibility of having to intervene in the execution "if any evidence of either pain or a return to consciousness arose."
The guy did rape and kill a 17 year old girl after all, then says the death penalty is cruel and inhumane....hmmmm, wonder if the girl had the same chance...
BUT...
If you're going to have executions, the whole "cruel and unusual" argument to stymie them just seems really bizarre to me. Assuming a society agrees that we should have executions - which American society largely has ceded - why must there be a guarantee that executions be 100% painless? I'm not saying people should be tortured to death with a red-hot wire hanger up their ass (Wu Tang, holla back!) and frankly, the electric chair seemed like a really bad idea on multiple levels but there are other ways to guarantee that people get dead that fall short of what you'd define as torture: beheadings, firing squad, the gas chamber. It just seems crazy to me that with six million ways to die (choose one), it's the method that becomes the hang-up.
Again, I'm not saying I'm for the death penalty but my opposition to it is hardly over the method of execution.
but:
agreed.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-morales22feb22,0,704779.story?coll=la-home-headlines
State Halts Execution to Review Procedure
Officials are unable to meet a judge's demand that a lethal injection be overseen by a doctor. Effects on the death penalty are unclear.
By Louis Sahagun and Henry Weinstein, Times Staff Writers
SAN QUENTIN ??? Capping a dramatic legal battle that raised questions of medical ethics and the future of lethal injection, California prison officials late Tuesday called off Michael Morales' execution, saying they were unable to comply with a judge's conditions for putting the convicted rapist-murderer to death.
The state's decision means that the execution will be delayed at the very least until early May ??? and more likely for many months ??? while the federal court in San Jose conducts a formal evidentiary hearing on the constitutionality of the state's execution procedures.
Although it is unclear whether the continuing legal saga will have a broad effect on the death penalty in California ??? the U.S. Supreme Court has never found any method of execution unconstitutional ??? several experts said the controversy will probably prompt a reexamination of how executions are conducted here and across the country.
Morales was sitting in a prison cell with his Los Angeles attorney, David Senior, when San Quentin spokesman Vernell Crittendon brought them the news that the execution had been called off.
"He was quite relieved to find he was not being executed," Crittendon said. "He smiled and nodded and thanked me."
It is highly unusual for a death sentence to be stayed in the final hours because of a legal challenge over the method of execution. The May hearing is expected to be the most detailed court examination of the state's execution methods since the switch from use of the gas chamber to lethal injection in 1996.
The Morales furor began a week ago when U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel declared that California's three-stage drug cocktail of a sedative, paralytic drug and heart-stopping chemical ??? the same protocol used in 37 of the 38 states with lethal injection ??? could mask, rather than eliminate, an inmate's pain during execution.
Fogel said the state would have to modify its execution procedure or he would hold a full hearing on the process in May.
To address his concern, prison officials elected to go forward just after midnight Monday with two doctors on hand to ensure that the sedative would be sufficient to deaden the pain of the heart-stopping drug. Just before the execution, however, the two anesthesiologists balked, saying the procedures forced them into the role of executioner, in violation of their medical ethics.
Fogel then said officials could go forward later in the day with a lethal dose of the sedative alone ??? administered by a licensed medical professional stationed within the execution chamber rather than by the usual "unseen hand" delivering the fatal drugs from another room.
But just two hours before the new, 7:30 p.m. time for the execution, a deputy attorney general told court officials that it had been called off.
San Quentin spokesman Crittendon said the state "was not able to find any medical professionals willing to inject medication intravenously, ending the life of a human being."
"The warden felt it was not ethical to approach an individual who would potentially be putting their license in jeopardy," Crittendon said. "How would it affect their careers by being involved in the execution process in the manner we've been discussing?"
Tuesday's outcome was applauded by attorney Natasha Minsker, who directs the death penalty project of the American Civil Liberties of Northern California. "We think this is appropriate," she said. "There will be a hearing so both sides can present their evidence. It is a serious issue that needs careful consideration."
Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, which favors the death penalty, said he thought Tuesday's outcome was "an unfortunate result. It is based on a very remote possibility that there is a problem with the procedure. It is unfortunate that this is being done at the last minute."
But he said the delay, while highly unusual, was merely temporary and predicted that it would have no long term consequences on capital punishment.
Crittendon said Morales spent the day in a death-watch cell 15 feet from the execution chamber. At 3:20 p.m., he visited with his lawyers. Then, at 5:45 p.m., he was returned to the more distant death-row cell he had occupied until Monday.
Crittendon also met with family members of 17-year-old Terri Winchell, whom Morales was convicted of murdering. "They took this very hard," Crittendon said.
Reached at her Lodi-area home, Terri Winchell's mother described herself as "knocked down" by the decision. It "was just like someone hit you in the stomach," Barbara Christian said. "You feel weak, and the pain hurts???. We have lived with a knife in our hearts for all these years, and this makes the knife even sharper."
The halting of the execution comes as challenges to the constitutionality of lethal injection are spreading across the country. First adopted by Oklahoma when it enacted a new death penalty law in 1977, lethal injection is now the predominant method of execution across the nation.
Very interesting indeed... When I read both articles this week I was really surprised... I don't know if it will do anything to hinder/delay future executions but the thought did cross my mind...
Personally Im not in favor of the death penalty, but if i had to go out like that, id want my head cut off in the town square or something. Sounds extreme, but the end result is exactly the same as the supposedly "humane" process of lethal injection. Furthermore it would probably be quicker and a good bit less expensive.
Doctors can remove cancers, carry out complex neurosurgery, and rearrange people's body parts more ways than I can count, and yet, we can't figure out a method to inject a person with a lethal dose of drugs that doesn't cause pain?
I'll admit that I am totally unfamiliar with the laws mandating said procedure (paging faux--SS legal counsel) and that I am VERY far removed from the medical profession (paging coselmed--SS medical counsel). Given my layman knowledge of drugs, however, it seems to me we could pump somebody up with opiates, put them to sleep with another cocktail, and then administer the lethal dose of sodium pentothal.
Am I callous for thinking of the specific mechanics of this procedure? Possibly. Do I think that there is an underlying agenda veiled by the "mechanics" and physician moral responsibility argument? Yes. It seems to me that this is a loop-hole argument against the death-penalty.
Let me clear though: I am 100% against the death penalty but the whole controversy seems confusing. I guess I like to see long-standing divisive issues like the death-penalty resolved with clear and direct arguments as opposed from the flank.
yeah, i dont know, really. i just was watching boston legal last night and those lawyers mentioned poptarts! i shit thee not!
I'm surprised there isn't such a thing as a licensed executioner who's trained in biology...there would be no hippocratic oath to stop a guy like that. Bet that's on its way.
Anesthesiologists are trained to keep people sedated and unconcious while undergoing surgery. Their whole job is to monitor the sedation and drug level so that the individual does not wake up or die. Since they're always trying to keep that balance, it's a good bet that they know how much NOT to put in so that they don't kill the person.