Delay frustrates death row inmate

Holman doesn't see need for a doctor

A convicted killer on North Carolina's death row who fired his attorneys and wants to die said Thursday he is frustrated that a dispute over the role doctors should play in executions has kept the state from putting him to death.

Allen Holman's execution is one of five on hold in North Carolina, where the state medical board has threatened to punish any doctor who takes part in an execution.

"Why do they have a problem? They perform abortions, murder babies all the time," Holman told The Associated Press in an interview at the state's Central Prison. "They all of a sudden got conscience about their Hippocratic oath.

"I think doctors' licenses ought to be protected if they want to participate."

State law only requires a doctor be present, but a federal judge issued an order requiring prisons to have a doctor monitor inmates to ensure they don't feel pain as officials inject them with a combination of three chemicals.

In January, the medical board responded by declaring that any doctor who participates in an execution violates medical ethics and risks sanction. The resulting conflict has effectively imposed an execution moratorium in the state, although capital trials and appeals continue.

Holman, 47, has declined further appeals since the state Supreme Court affirmed his conviction and death sentence for the 1997 murder of his estranged wife, Linda, a prison nurse who was gunned down after a car chase in Wake County.

"Some parts of it make sense to me but don't make sense to anybody else," Holman said. "I don't feel no remorse or regret about what I did. I haven't cried no tears."

He fired his attorneys last year, but they filed a motion last week anyway asking a judge to place his execution -- set for 2 a.m. today -- on hold. Had the legal process moved faster, Holman said Thursday, he would have been executed already and not caught up in the current dispute.

"It's just a matter of waiting," he said.

Holman said he didn't understand why a doctor needed to be at his execution, saying a nurse or someone else with proper training could insert the needle used to deliver the lethal drugs.

"I don't see the big thing about whether it is a doctor or a nurse," Holman said.

He also said the state could streamline its system of putting inmates to death. Instead of using the combination of three chemicals to put the inmate into a deep sleep, paralyze the body and cause a fatal heart attack, he said the state should use a massive dose of a single, fatal drug.

"I can't think of any more humane way for them to perform an execution," he said.

Holman said he supports the death penalty and thinks that inmates should be put to death "within a reasonable amount of time" instead of waiting years to be executed.

"It's like being punished twice for the same crime. There's nothing like death row," he said.

Holman said his desire to die creates tension on death row.

"I don't want what I'm trying to do to have an effect on guys on death row who want to live," he said. "It's not my fault this happened this late in the game."