Wrong diagnosis

The standoff between the N.C. Medical Board and the state's prison officials continues, and it only becomes more complicated -- and more maddening. This is what it has come to: prison officials are filing a lawsuit to stop the Medical Board from disciplining doctors for violating a new mandate from the board that says doctors can only be present at executions, not monitor their progress or take another acts that would amount to participation.

In other words, prison officials want to exempt doctors from ethics guidelines created by a physicians' professional oversight organization. They should not interfere in the board's decision, because it is none of their business. In fact, it is an outrageous proposition.

This continues a now longstanding dispute over whether doctors violate their duty to save lives when they participate in executions, even just by monitoring inmates' vital signs as they are put to death. Wake Superior Court Judge Donald Stephens has stopped five executions (since January) because of this conflict over what a doctor's role can and cannot be. The other factor in play is a lawsuit filed that questions whether death by lethal injection may under some circumstances constitute cruel and unusual punishment because of the pain it would cause. That, of course, would violate the U.S. Constitution. It is an issue in discussion outside of North Carolina as well.

At Stephens' direction, prison officials consulted Governor Easley and the Council of State (made up of independently elected top officials) to approve a protocol for executions wherein a doctor could watch the inmate's vital signs and intervene if the process went awry. In other words, the doctor would be obliged to help save a life that the state was trying to take -- so that it could be taken later. That is...well, it's absurd. The Medical Board, thankfully, refused to come to terms with the prison officials.

Enough is enough. The General Assembly needs to call a moratorium on the death penalty until these and other issues can be settled. One year, two years, whatever it takes. The complications of the death penalty -- beyond moral objections which are legitimate -- are many, and include the potential taking of an innocent life. That risk is not worth it, period.