Doctor's Oath Kills Death Penalty in North Carolina

Governor Easley and the Council of State place death penalty on indefinite leave.

Raleigh News & Observer staff writer Andrea Weigl announced on the front page that North Carolina Governor Mike Easley and his Council of State have decided that the requirement that a doctor participate in executions to assure that prisoners do not needlessly suffer create a problem that the state legislature needs to address.

The controversy over executions came when the North Carolina Medical Board ruled that it doctors cannot participate in executions. At the same time the legislation defining how executions are to be performed in North Carolina requires a doctor's presence.

The Council of State which is made up the nine senior elected state executives voted six to three for what is in effect a moratorium on executions until the legislature acts.

The vote was bipartisan with three republicans and three democrats voting for the moratorium; and two democrats and one republican voting for continuing executions.

The controversy began in earnest in 2006 when a federal judge allowed an execution to go forward so long as a doctor was tracking an inmate's consciousness on a monitor.

The North Carolina Medical Board stepped in forbidding doctors to anything more than just being present at an execution.

The medical board's decision provided ammunition for defense lawyers to go to court for their clients as the state could not, without a doctor monitoring the execution, guarantee that their client would be fully sedated during the execution.

Prison officials tried to get around the issue by setting up a policy whereby the monitoring would be done by a nurse. A doctor would be present in case of a medical emergency.

This solution, the inmates attorneys pointed out was not sensible. The doctor's oath would mean that if the inmate began to die the doctor would have to intervene. But intervened the inmate would not be executed. If the doctor didn't intervene then the doctor would be guilty of unethical medical behavior.