Judge: Medical board can't punish execution docs

RALEIGH -- The N.C. Medical Board does not have a right to discipline doctors who participate in executions, a Wake Superior Court judge ruled today.

Judge Donald Stephens said the state's obligation to have a doctor "attend and provide professional medical assessment" during executions trumps the Medical Board's authority to make sure its doctors are being ethical. The Medical Board has said that doctors who participate in executions could be disciplined, because a doctor's role is to preserve life.

Lawyers for the state Department of Correction and the Medical Board, adversaries in a lawsuit over the board's ethics policy, argued for nearly two hours Aug. 29 before Stephens. They could not agree on what lawmakers meant when they said a doctor must be "present" at executions.

The board says lawmakers defined present as "in view" of an inmate. But prison officials say it means that a doctor must monitor an inmate for undue suffering during executions.

Stephens denied the Medical Board's motion to dismiss suit, filed by state prison officials. The suit sought to stop the board from disciplining doctors who monitor executions.

It was unclear immediately how the ruling would affect a halt on executions in the state.

Jerry Conner, one of a handful of inmates whose executions have been stayed, could be up first for lethal injection. He had been scheduled for execution last year; the other inmates' execution dates were set for this year.

Last year, a judge issued an order allowing prison officials to execute an inmate using a new lethal injection protocol. That protocol required doctors not only to be present, but to monitor inmates for undue suffering.

In January, the Medical Board passed the ethics policy, allowing doctors to be present for the executions but to take no active role.

The Council of State, a group of top elected state officials, approved the protocol, but doctors refused to monitor the inmates because of the Medical Board's ethics policy.

Prison officials, in turn, filed the lawsuit against the Medical Board.

Attorneys for prison officials maintained that the Medical Board was using its policy to halt to executions, though the board denied that.