CMA Opposes Physician Involvement in Capital Punishment
[Posted 02/16/06]

CMA today issued a statement reiterating the association’s long-standing opposition to physician involvement in capital punishment. The statement follows a recent federal court ruling suggesting that physician participation is one way to minimize excessive pain during executions in California. CMA has for decades sought to end physician participation in capital punishment, including seeking legislation banning such actions by physicians and other health care professionals.

U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel Tuesday ordered state officials to change the way they administer the fatal dose, or face a delay in death row inmate Michael Morales’s execution, which is scheduled for February 21. Fogel said in a 15-page ruling that San Quentin State Prison officials may either administer fatal levels of sedatives exclusively or have an anesthesiologist present to ensure that Morales is unconscious before they deliver the standard mix of sedatives, paralytic agents, and heart-stopping chemicals.

CMA believes that a physician, as a member of a profession dedicated to preserving life when there is hope of doing so, should not participate in legally authorized executions. Regardless of its method of delivery, capital punishment is not a medical task, it does not require medical skills and the use of a physician’s medical skills for this nonmedical task is inappropriate and a breach of one of the medical profession’s most important ethical boundaries. CMA believes that physician participation in capital punishment threatens the public’s trust of physicians. This trust is central to the physician-patient relationship.

If they want to go ahead without appealing the ruling, state corrections officials must decide whether to accept Fogel’s proposal of using sedatives, or select an anesthesiologist. Neither the state attorney general nor Morales’ attorneys would say whether they plan to appeal the ruling. California began executing prisoners by injection in 1996 after a federal appeals court ruled that San Quentin’s gas chamber violated the U.S. Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

AMA has also declared physician participation in executions to be unethical. Physician participation includes, but is not limited to, prescribing or administering medications as part of the execution procedure, attending or observing an execution as a physician, as well as monitoring vital signs on site or remotely, or rendering technical advice regarding execution.

Contact: CMA Media Relations, 916/444-5532 or pwarren@cmanet.org.