To: Justices of the US Supreme Court
We welcome the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the constitutionality of lethal injections as practiced in Kentucky.
36 of the 37 death penalty states authorize lethal injection for executions. Most of these states use the same 3-drug combination for lethal injections: sodium pentothal (an anesthetic), pancuronium bromide (a paralytic agent), and potassium chloride (stops the heart and causes death). Some states have not specified the drugs they use.
Scientists who studied the lethal injection noted in their report — published by the online journal PLoS Medicine — that there are procedural problems that could lead to insufficient anesthesia in executions and found evidence that the design of the drug scheme itself is flawed: “Thiopental does not predictably induce respiratory arrest, nor does potassium chloride always induce cardiac arrest. Furthermore, on the basis of execution data and clinical, veterinary, and laboratory animal studies, we posit that the specified quantity of thiopental may not provide surgical anesthesia for the duration of the execution. Thus some inmates may experience the sensations of pancuronium — induced paralysis and respiratory arrest.”
The study concluded that the typical "one-size-fits-all" doses of anesthetics do not take into account an inmate's weight and other key factors. For some inmates the dose was too low, and in some cases the anesthetic wore off before the execution was over, the authors found.
"The person would feel either asphyxiation or the burning sensation associated with the potassium," said Dr. Leonidas Koniaris, a surgeon and co-author at the University of Miami. "The potassium would cause extreme discomfort, something like being put on fire."
The findings of the study make clear that only physicians are able to take all key factors of a certain inmate into account to provide a dose of the drugs that is supposed to cause death in a way that could be called “humane”. This is however where the crux of the whole procedure lies — unnaturally causing the death of a human being can never be called “humane”.
The American Medical Association (AMA) says that participation at executions violates medical ethics. A physician is a member of a profession dedicated to preserving life when there is hope of doing so. The use of a physician's clinical skills and judgment for purposes other than promoting an individual's health and welfare undermines a basic ethical foundation of medicine — first, do no harm.
The guidelines in the AMA Code of Medical Ethics address physician participation in executions involving lethal injection. The ethical opinion explicitly prohibits selecting injection sites for executions by lethal injection, starting intravenous lines, prescribing, administering, or supervising the use of lethal drugs, monitoring vital signs, on site or remotely, and declaring death.
The major result of this whole consideration is that apart from the drug scheme the procedure is also flawed, and the physicians who would be able to execute it correctly are prevented by their ethics to do so. There can be only one answer to solve this problem: Declare the lethal injection unconstitutional!
Even though there is no doubt that a convicted murderer crossed the forbidden line by taking the life of another human being we should respect this line generally and especially because we are unable to administer the death penalty in a fair way. Doing the same — killing the killer — is nothing else than state sanctioned murder and doing the same by killing the killer while knowing that the procedure has a high risk of inflicting horrible pain and horrible suffering is simply unworthy of a modern society under the rule of law that respects human dignity as well as human rights.
Let humanity prevail! Stop lethal injection! Stop executions!
Sincerely,
The Undersigned
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