Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Stateline Report: Executions halted as doctors balk

"After 897 executions by lethal injection over the past 25 years, the role of doctors in carrying out the death penalty is surfacing as the latest ethical issue to force a re-examination of capital punishment in the United States.

A conflict between medical ethics and court orders that a doctor participate in lethal injections has halted executions in California, Missouri and North Carolina. But the ethical issue raised by doctors in the death chamber lurks beneath the surface in most of the 37 capital-punishment states that sanction chemical execution, a mode of death also facing separate constitutional challenges over whether it unduly inflicts pain on prisoners." Source: Stateline.org

Link to online article

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