OP-ED: Increasing Health Care’s Role on Death Row to Avoid Botched Executions
by Keya Patel
AT 6:23 P.M. on April 29, 2014, Clayton Lockett’s execution began. The doctor use a lethal injection never before tested. At 6:33 pm the doctor announced Lockett was unconscious. At 6:39 pm, Lockett said the word “man” and tried to get off his gurney, showing clear signs of movement. The execution was stopped because the drugs were not entirely injected into Lockett’s body and there was not enough left to try again. By 7:10 pm, Lockett was pronounced dead – not from the lethal injection, but from a heart attack. To decrease the unnecessarily painful aspects of the death sentence, as seen in Lockett’s execution, the US government and courts must better utilize health care personnel involved with the inmate’s sentencing.
Many people, including Sidney Wolfe from the New York Times, argue that health care officials have absolutely no role in intentionally killing another human, since a core value of their profession is to do no harm. Although health care professionals believe in doing no harm, they must prioritize mitigating harm in situations where death is inevitable, like executions involving the death penalty. In order to reduce excessively painful aspects of the inmate’s punishment, health care professionals need to be integrated more with existing death row practices. The three types of health care personnel that need to be utilized are psychiatrists required to psychologically support death row inmates, pharmacists that make drugs for the lethal injections, and physicians involved with the execution.
Currently mental health checks are given to inmates, but psychiatrists must be required by the court to guide an inmate through the death row phenomena. The phenomenon occurs when an inmate becomes mentally unstable due to anxiety stemming from solitary confinement. Like Juan Mendez, a UN representative, I consider solitary confinement itself as a form of torture. Inmates on death row can develop depression, anger, hypersensitivity, paranoia, and try to do self-harm due to solitary confinement. A psychiatrist’s role should consist of meeting with the inmate to provide human interaction and emotional support to alleviate the mental suffering inmates can inflict on themselves. By offering additional psychological care to inmates prior to death, the inmates will experience a less cruel form of torture leading up to their execution.
US-based pharmacies that manufacturer drugs for lethal injections need to be better supported with testing facilities to continue production. Pharmacies where the deadly drugs are made are unregulated and have minimal testing features, as discussed by Sawiki in The New England Journal of Medicine. By regulating and encouraging testing, pharmacies can get the drug mixture correct, unlike in Lockett’s botched execution. Also, state and federal governments can assist pharmacies by providing anonymity for producing the fatal drugs. The pharmacists can then spend adequate time preparing and testing drug mixtures before executions without fear. By properly equipping pharmacies, inmates will not have to be subject to additional pain as a result of a chemically incorrect lethal drug.
Courts must ask the American Medical Association to encourage doctors to adequately prepare, if the physician choses to partake in executions. Executions are dangerously haphazard without proper medical oversight. The alternative would be to ask prison employees with no training to do the procedures, which does occurs. Therefore, in order to inflict the least amount of intentional pain during executions, the American Medical Association must prepare physicians to receive training prior to executions. The training can involve inserting IVs, monitoring vitals, and pushing lethal drugs in high stress situations. If states force medical associations to provide thorough training for doctors who chose to participate in executions, physicians can have a valuable role in avoiding botched executions and decreasing cruel and inhumane torture of inmates.
With the death penalty already considered as a form of torture by Cesare Beccaria and others, measures need to be put into place by the government to decrease any additional cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment of inmates prior to and during executions. By better supporting health care officials, inmates like Clayton Lockett would not be subject to botched executions with over an hour of suffering before death. The purpose of the lethal injection is to quickly and efficiently kill a criminal, not to cause even more torture that would otherwise be avoidable with proper health care assistance.
Keya Patel is a University of Michigan senior.