The death penalty is always inhumane. Keep Indiana doctors out of it.
Every execution in Indiana since 1996, including those most recently of Joseph Corcoran and Benjamin Ritchie, has been carefully designed to make the viewer feel good about themselves.
They might even mistake the process for a medical procedure, if dropped into the execution room with no context. Lethal injection, which involves an overdose of a sedative drug, was invented to be a 'humane' alternative to hanging, the electric chair, the firing squad and gas chambers, at least for the viewer.
Lethal injection also requires participation by doctors, who are protected by a privacy curtain in the execution chamber and the anonymity afforded to them by state law. However, allowing doctors to violate their oath to 'do no harm' and American Medical Association guidelines in this case needs to stop. It creates a far worse precedent than purportedly less humane methods of execution, and paves the way for exceptions to the rule of 'do no harm' in the case of abortion and assisted suicide.
Gov. Mike Braun recently pointed out it cost $900,000 for enough of the drug used for lethal injection to execute the last two state death row inmates.
'The same drug they're using to execute people — you can get it for less than $10 from a veterinarian,' State Rep. Bob Morris, R-Fort Wayne, told me in an interview. Morris is a Catholic who led a charge to abolish the death penalty in Indiana earlier this year.
'One of the biggest disturbing things is — if we really do respect life — is we don't even know where this drug even came from,' Morris said.
If the high price tag of the 'humane alternative' — which also happens to be used to kill animals — is not convincing enough that either another method or a moratorium needs to take effect, the fact that lethal injection is still botched more than any other form of execution, despite physician participation, should be.
This method of execution is unfair to both the doctor and the public, who are presented with a false view of death. Killing another human can never be humane. It is nothing if not a brutal form of justice at its core, something appreciated by the victims of those put to death.
The recent nitrogen hypoxia execution of Kenneth Smith in Alabama came much closer to matching this reality. Studies have shown that the death penalty is not an effective form of deterrence, and it certainly doesn't serve any rehabilitative purpose.
Physician-assisted suicide is a great example of what happens when this false view of death becomes ingrained in the culture. Eleven states allow physicians to participate in this practice, called 'death with dignity' by supporters.
Death can never be dignified. When a man or woman feels like their life has no value, and there is no other release than death, it is a signal that they have been failed by society. There is no greater failure in such a case than the medical professionals who push a sanitized view of death on the most vulnerable.
As a state that claims to be resolutely committed to the pro-life cause and defending unborn life, we also need to consider how we can condemn abortionists and demand transparency for violating their oath to do no harm if we not only accept physicians playing the role of prison executioner, but also grant them anonymity in doing so.
Abortionists at least can claim to be caring for the pregnant woman when they put to death the innocent child in her womb. Physicians participating in the death penalty cannot claim to be putting the needs of one of their patients above another, because they have no obligation to execute justice on behalf of the state.
Briggs: Indiana hides executions. Firing squads would be more honest.
During my two years working as a patient care assistant at IU Health University Hospital, I helped care for, and saw doctors and nurses care for, scores of prisoners. Despite the fact many were likely convicted of terrible crimes, they were given the same attention as any other patient.
It was an excellent testimony of moral duty and something that stuck with my spirit long after I decided the medical profession was not where I belonged. In a day and age where both political parties seem to endorse a culture of death in some form or another, a better answer to the problems we face is a consistently pro-life mentality.
It is clear that the two executions Indiana has carried out in the past six months has led people on both sides of the aisle to recognize a problem.
If our state is truly committed to ending its culture of death, physician involvement in the death penalty needs to end.
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