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Physician involvement in executions

GLP works to prevent the state from using physicians for torture or executions. As part of this effort we filed an amicus brief on behalf of California physicians who sought a court injunction against the state's use of physicians in capital punishment (lethal injection) on the basis that such participation was always unethical "unprofessional conduct." On September 29, 1998, the Court of Appeal for the First Appellate District, Div. 3, rejected this contention on the basis that the legislature had specifically authorized physician participation. The primary contention in our brief, that a violation of universal medical ethics must per se be actionable by medical licensing authorities was noted, but dismissed with little discussion: "We agree, as a general matter, that the ethical rules serve a such a vital purpose [to guarantee trust that must exist between physicians and their patients]. We do not agree, however, that physician participation in executions is likely to erode trust between individual physicians and patients who have not been sentenced to death for a capital crime, or undermine public confidence in physicians or the medical profession as a whole." Thorburn v. California Dept. Corrections, 66 Cal. App. 4th 1284 (1998).

In December, 1999, GLP, along with Physicians for Human Rights, the Society of General Internal Medicine, the American Nurses Association, and the American Public Health Association, filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court of the United States in the support of the reversal of Anthony Braden Ryan v. Michael Moore, Secretary, Florida Department of Correction. The amici curiae argued that against the use of electrocution as a form of capital punishment: "Based on [existing evidence], a substantial risk exists that death and unconsciousness will not be immediate when a judicial electrocution is performed, that the inmate will retain consciousness for some period of time and will experience for that period the intense pain caused by exposure to a massive electrical charge...this risk is unreasonable and unacceptable and renders electrocution a brutal and inhumane procedure that should be banned as unconstitutional by this Court."