Physician Participation in Executions: Care Giver or Executioner?

Abstract

To circumvent objections that the death penalty was “cruel and unusual punishment” and therefore a violation of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, advocates proposed lethal injection and the involvement of physicians to overcome the negative perceptions associated with the death penalty, and to increase public acceptability of the practice. Initiated in 1982, lethal injection is now the primary method of execution in 37 of the 38 states with the death penalty. “To be exact, this method has been used to kill 788 of the 956 men and women who have been executed in the United States since 1976, when the death penalty was reinstated by the Supreme Court.” More recently, of the 191 executions performed in the United States since 2001, 189 have been by lethal injection.This “medicalization” of the death penalty has ignited a debate, by those within the medical profession and by others outside it, about the appropriateness of physicians participating in executions.