Opinion in Brief
Brief
Michael Morales is supposed to be dead already, executed by lethal injection. He would be, but medical professionals – unlike the prison officials who usually handle this stuff – are having some ethical issues.
And who could blame them? Pumping poison into people for the sole purpose of executing them is not a job that allows you to go home with a smile on your face.
Michael Morales is supposed to be dead already, executed by lethal injection. He would be, but medical professionals – unlike the prison officials who usually handle this stuff – are having some ethical issues.
And who could blame them? Pumping poison into people for the sole purpose of executing them is not a job that allows you to go home with a smile on your face. If you disagree, you should seriously consider a career working for a prison system.
Morales, 46, was scheduled to be killed Tuesday, but a judge ruled that an anesthesiologist had to be there to make sure Morales was unconscious and therefore unable to feel pain when injected with the paralyzing drug.
Nobody has taken San Quentin State Prison up on the offer.
The other option the judge gave was to have a licensed practitioner inject a lethal dose of sedatives. This method would take 30 minutes to kill the prisoner. There have been no volunteers for that job, either.
Usually lethal injections are administered by a machine, which is hooked up intravenously by trained prison staff, and consists of three drugs: one to sedate, one to paralyze and one to stop the heart.
It’s obvious that putting this responsibility directly into the hands of a medical professional is a lot more difficult that turning on a machine. Maybe it’s because such people generally aren’t sadistic, or maybe it’s because the machine doesn’t give a damn.
