Clinicians’ Involvement in Capital Punishment – Constitutional Implications

Nadia N. Sawicki

New England Journal of Medicine, NEJM
New England Journal of Medicine

Extract
If capital punishment is constitutional, as it has long been held to be, then it “necessarily follows that there must be a means of carrying it out.”1 So the Supreme Court concluded in Baze v. Rees, a 2008 challenge to Kentucky’s lethal-injection protocol . . .

Lethal injection, the primary execution method used in all death-penalty states, was adopted precisely because its sanitized, quasi-clinical procedures were intended to ensure humane deaths consistent with the Eighth Amendment. But experiences like Clayton Lockett’s . . .demonstrate the dearth of safeguards for ensuring that this goal is actually achieved. . . Nevertheless, states have demonstrated their willingness to continue with lethal injections, and most federal courts have allowed executions to proceed in the face of constitutional challenges. The time is therefore ripe for the medical and scientific communities to consider, once again, their role in this process.


Sawicki NN. Clinicians’ Involvement in Capital Punishment – Constitutional Implications. N Engl J Med 371;2 nejm.org july 10, 2014

Physicians, Medical Ethics, and Execution by Lethal Injection

Robert D. Truog, I. Glenn Cohen,  Mark A. Rockoff

Journal of the American Medical Association
Journal of the American Medical Association

Extract
In an opinion dissenting from a Supreme Court decision to deny review in a death penalty case, Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun famously wrote, “From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.” In the wake of the recent botched execution by lethal injection in Oklahoma, however, a group of eminent legal professionals known as the Death Penalty Committee of The Constitution Project has published a sweeping set of 39 recommendations that not only tinker with, but hope to fix, the multitude of problems that affect this method of capital punishment.


Truog RD, Cohen IG, Rockoff MA. Physicians, Medical Ethics, and Execution by Lethal Injection. JAMA. 2014;311(23):2375-2376. doi:10.1001/jama.2014.6425