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Editorial: A penalty of the past

Sunday, January 4, 2009

(Updated 3:00 am)

Gov. Mike Easley raised a pointed question about crime and punishment:

"When are we going to hold some of these people accountable and get some of these executions going again? That's what I want to know," the governor said to N&R reporter Mark Binker in an interview last month.

It won't happen on Easley's watch. His term expires Saturday. Whether the state's execution chamber gets busy again during the tenure of the next governor, Bev Perdue, remains to be seen. She also supports capital punishment, although probably not as impatiently as Easley.

If she and legislative leaders are wise, however, they'll find a way out of North Carolina's death-penalty dilemma.

Attitudes and applications are changing. Nothing could show this more dramatically than the fact that only one convicted murderer was sentenced to death in North Carolina during 2008.

That continues a downward trend, and it demonstrates that juries are increasingly uncomfortable with the death penalty and more confident in the alternative of life in prison without parole. Easley might be eager for executions to get going again, but the men and women who serve on juries don't share his fervor.

Exceptions are possible. The killing of UNC student Eve Carson last March might be a case where a jury recommends the death penalty, but that crime generated extraordinary attention and sympathy for the victim. Much more often, juries show restraint or prosecutors accept a guilty plea in exchange for a life sentence.

This creates an obvious inequity. There are 162 inmates on North Carolina's Death Row. Most were put there under standards in place 10 or 15 years ago or longer. If tried for the same offenses today, most probably would not be sentenced to death. It's not that their crimes weren't heinous; rather, life in prison usually is seen now as the most appropriate punishment.

Executions in North Carolina have been stalled for more than two years for a different reason. State law requires a physician to attend each execution, but the N.C. Medical Board forbids it. The impasse is waiting for resolution by the state Supreme Court.

This has created a disgraceful conflict, with state authorities trying to force an organization of professional healers to abandon medical ethics.

The way out is clear. The legislature and governor -- Perdue, not Easley -- should do away with the death penalty and convert the sentence of every condemned prisoner to life without parole. That will put an end to death-sentence appeals, eliminate inconsistencies, ease the medical conflict and bring the law into line with the way the courts apply it in almost every case.

Easley asks when executions will get going again, but juries are speaking. They rarely see the death penalty as the state's best response anymore, even to terrible crimes.

Is anyone listening? Juries are making more sense than the outgoing governor.

What do you think?

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Panacea

January 4, 2009 - 10:40 am EST

Better yet, the General Assembly could change state law so a physician does not have to be present.

As a culture, the death penalty bothers us. That's why we keep it out of sight, that's why we went from methods that work but are gruesome to methods that mostly work but have their problems.

There are probably some crimes for which death is justified. But if we're going to execute someone, let's drop the pretense of doing it "humanely", as if taking a life is ever humane, even if justified.

Better still lets stop filling up prisons with non-violent offenders, and warehousing them so they come out violent and commit the crimes that land them on Death Row.

OldSoldier

January 4, 2009 - 4:21 pm EST

No, people are not listening. In particular you aren't.

Those who have gone through the legal process, been found guilty of horrible crimes and sentenced to die should be put to death. Those juries were quite clear as to what was to be done; unlike the assumption you make about current “trends”. The crime rate overall is down. Each potential death case would have to be reviewed to understand why the jury returned a verdict other than a death sentence for your assumption to be anything other than an opinion. An opinion you are entitled too. Please don’t make it sound like fact.

Picking which jury verdicts you like is human, but it’s not honest. I know someone who was not guilty of a crime, was found not guilty yet is treated as a felon in this community anyway. Same behavior just the other side of the coin.

Leaving people on death row for years is outrageous. Factors which affect the effectiveness of a penalty are certainty of punishment and swift punishment. When it comes to death penalty cases our system is weak on both counts.

There is no conflict having medical staff assist in the execution of a murderer. The purpose is to make sure the sentence is carried out as swiftly and painlessly as possible. That’s the same reason we don’t shoot, hang or electrocute murderers anymore. If we go back to those methods we don’t need the doctors anymore. Would that cure the medical board’s dilemma?

Panacea

January 5, 2009 - 10:32 am EST

Sorry, Old Soldier, but you are assuming that there is no conflict between medical principles and participating in an execution. As a health care professional and former correctional nurse, I respectfully disagree.

Participating in an execution is directly contrary to the oaths sworn by both physicians and nurses: the principle of do no harm in the Hippocratic Oath for docs. For nurses it's " I will abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous, and will not take or knowingly administer any harmful drug," from the Nightingale Pledge.

Health care providers are devoted to improving the quality of life, to caring for, curing, and preventing illness and injury. For an ethical provider, to participate in the taking of a life is an anathema to our purpose in this world.

Execution is a state function. In the past, the state would hire a person to perform the execution. In the best circumstance this was a person trained in the operation of whatever tool he was using to carry out the orders of the state. In the worst, the person was whoever was willing to take the coin to do the deed. If the death penalty is to be continued in this country, willing volunteers must be trained in the performance of this duty. This is, in fact, what happens. Usually a correctional officer is trained to start the IV and operate the machinery that administers the triple cocktail of lethal drugs.

The downside to this is IV insertion is a fine motor skill that takes considerable practice in order to become proficient. Complicating this is the too often scenario of the condemned with a history of IV drug abuse, whose veins are so scarred from repeatedly "shooting up" that it is impossible to obtain access. Inserting a line directly into a deep, or central vein, is a bedside surgical procedure only physicians are trained and competent to perform.

One of the drugs used in executions is potassium chloride. This is the final drug, the one that induces a fatal cardiac arrhythmia. It is caustic to the vein and causes excruciating pain. Medically, we use this drug to correct deficiencies in serum potassium levels. We administer a fraction of the dose used in executions over a 2 hour period. Even then, I often have to run in a bag of normal saline at a high rate of speed to ease the burning, and put a heating pad on the IV site to ease the pain and dilate it so allow better flow. Even then, we often lose the IV site and have to start another.

So, it's really not that simple.

The Supreme Court recently held in Kentucky that the triple cocktail of sodium pentothal (an anesthetic), a paralytic, and potassium was not cruel and unusual punishment. I doubt the pain is that much worse than hanging, a gunshot to the head, electrocution, the gas chamber, or decapitation. It's usually less messy, and therefore easier for society to accept as "humane." However, there is no reason simply not to use a massive overdose of morphine to depress respirations and cause cardiac arrest. It is not painful to give IV, and you can keep upping the dose until breathing stops, no matter how hard a drug user they were in the past. I guess society objects to the idea of a criminal going out on a high. But it would be far more "humane" than what we are doing now.

I'm not saying we should eliminate the death penalty. I am saying we should stop kidding ourselves into believing the taking of a life, even if justified, is ever humane. I would rather take China's solution: a gunshot to the back of the head. Quick, sure, cheap. Just messy. Oh wait, we Americans don't like messy. Sigh.

One other point: the correctional officers who perform executions, as a general rule, are not real thrilled with what they are doing. Wardens choose executioners who support the state order, but don't feel a sense of righteousness in what they are doing. This is a good thing. Having worked in corrections as a nurse for three years, I know how the environment dehumanizes you, and makes you see inmates as objects rather than people. I lost a piece of myself working in a prison, and it took me a long time to get it back. I also learned that there are indeed innocent people in prison, and inmates who were convicted or sentenced on the basis of their race.

If we are going to continue with the death penalty in this country, that bias must be eliminated. A crime isn't any more heinous because the convicted is black, and the victim is white than the other way around.