Wary doctors shun execution

Prison officials sue to keep Medical Board from disciplining doctors who aid in lethal injections

RALEIGH -- A judge Tuesday delayed the execution of Allen Holman, which had been set for this week, because prison officials could not find doctors willing to risk losing their medical licenses by participating.

In a related development, state prison officials filed a lawsuit seeking to prohibit the N.C. Medical Board from disciplining doctors under the board's new mandate that they may only observe, not monitor, executions. The state's protocol requires that a doctor monitor the vital signs of the condemned inmate.

North Carolina is the second state in which prison officials have not been able to find doctors willing to aid executioners. California's death penalty has been halted since last year after two anesthesiologists refused to participate and no other doctors would take their place.

Tuesday's order was the fifth time since January that Wake Superior Court Judge Donald Stephens stopped an execution because of legal challenges to a doctor's role in the death chamber.

Dr. Charles van der Horst, a professor at UNC-Chapel Hill's school of medicine who helped push the medical board's ethics policy, called Tuesday's developments "terrific."

"Physicians should not be involved in murdering people," he said. "That is not the duty of physicians. Physicians are supposed to help people live, not kill them."

Wanting the needle

The news will likely disappoint Holman, 47, of Morrisville, who fired his lawyers and dropped his appeals. Holman has repeatedly asked state officials to proceed with his punishment, which had been scheduled for Friday. Holman was sentenced to death for killing his wife, Linda Holman, a prison nurse. On July 28, 1997, Holman chased his wife by car along N.C. 55 toward Apex at high speed, ramming her car from behind. When Linda Holman drove into the parking lot of a convenience store, Holman shot her in front of a police officer.

Linda Holman's daughter, Deborah Hartless, 39, of Baltimore was dismayed by the delay. She and her 20-year-old daughter had planned to travel to Raleigh to witness Holman's execution.

"It's very disappointing," Hartless said. "We'll just have to wait a little longer ... Hopefully, it won't take another 10 years."

North Carolina's de facto death penalty moratorium is the result of legal maneuvers in the wake of the medical board's new ethics policy and recent changes to prison officials' execution protocol. Last spring, lawyers for death row inmate Willie Brown filed a lawsuit raising concerns that the first of three drugs used to kill inmates didn't fully sedate them before paralyzing and heart-stopping drugs were injected. If the inmate was conscious for the second and third drugs, the lawyers argued that would be cruel and unusual punishment, and therefore unconstitutional.

A federal judge allowed Brown's execution to proceed on the condition that a doctor watch a brain-wave monitor to determine his consciousness before the fatal drugs were injected. But when the medical board passed its new ethics policy, prison officials backed off, saying a doctor would watch the inmate's vital signs only to be ready to administer medical aid if necessary.

It created a bizarre situation in which a doctor would try to save the life of an inmate in the process of being killed.

Stephens, the Wake judge, sent prison officials to Gov. Mike Easley and the Council of State, a panel of top state-elected officials, for approval of the new protocol. That approval sent prison officials to negotiate with the medical board to find a resolution. Those talks went nowhere, leading prison officials to sue the medical board.

In an affidavit, Marvin Polk, the warden of Central Prison, said he could not find a doctor for Holman's execution.

The prison argument

"My solicitation efforts have been unsuccessful as all licensed physicians I have contacted, including current employees of the N.C. Department of Correction, have advised that they refuse to subject themselves to disciplinary action by the board for participating or otherwise being involved in executions," Polk wrote.

Prison officials are likely headed back to court to argue that a doctor's participation in an execution is not a medical procedure, and therefore not under the purview of the medical board. They are asking the judge to prohibit the Medical Board from disciplining any doctor involved in past or future executions.

Medical Board officials could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Lawyers for the death row inmates disagreed with the state's suit.

"If you ask physicians to make assessments of people's vital signs, that's a medical function," said Raleigh lawyer Elizabeth Kuniholm.

"It is totally disingenuous to suggest that is not the practice of medicine," Raleigh lawyer Robert Zaytoun said. "I believe the physicians and the medical board would agree with that statement."