Doctors should not participate in executions

Editor—At the time that Dunea's article on the execution of Timothy McVeigh (the Oklahoma bomber) was published,¹ I was in Strasbourg participating in the first world congress against the death penalty.² Although some opponents of the United States death penalty may have drawn the line at the McVeigh case, no such sentiments were detected in Strasbourg. The presence at the congress of former (and innocent) residents of the death rows of the United States (Kerry Max Cook, 22 years under sentence of death) and Japan (Sakae Menda, 34 years under sentence of death) underlined an important, but not the sole, reason for concern about the use of the death penalty.

Opponents of the death penalty argue that one innocent life is too great a price to pay for carrying out executions. In Illinois, Governor George Ryan agreed and in January 2000 imposed a moratorium after 13 men were freed from death row after exoneration during the previous 13 years.

Dunea notes the high cost of the McVeigh trial but does not acknowledge that the high cost of capital trials is due to the death penalty. Irreversible penalties require absolute certainty and ample appeal processes. As the Illinois example shows, sophisticated legal systems fail to deliver safe convictions but do ensure that it costs more to kill prisoners with due process than to imprison them for life. Other studies have shown racial bias and failure to take account of mental illness and learning disabilities in those on trial for their lives.³ Above all, preserving respect for human rights is not effectively accomplished by putting individuals to death.

The study cited by Dunea showing willingness on the part of doctors in the United States to assist in executions, by Farber et al,⁴ does indeed indicate possible gaps between those elaborating ethical codes and doctors who are supposed to work within the codes' framework. Such discrepancies do not mean, though, that we should throw out the existing ethics and replace them with more populist ones. Doctors should not participate in executions; the challenge is to persuade all doctors that the medical role does not stretch to assisting in the killing of prisoners on behalf of the state.