Maybe the French had it right: If we're going to execute people, just trust gravity and a heavy blade to lop off their heads.

One thing's for sure -- no doctor would be called upon to determine whether the wretch being decapitated was suffering more than an acceptable level of pain. The guillotine being a slam-bang affair, such niceties would be rather pointless, now wouldn't they?

In North Carolina, doctors should be so lucky. State law requires a physician's presence during an execution, and a judge (the veteran Donald Stephens of Wake County Superior Court) recently ruled that the law didn't mean the physician could get by with just being a passive observer. No need for him to be there lolling around the death chamber if his medical expertise couldn't be put to use.

Put to use in what fashion? Well, there's the duty of ascertaining whether the person being pumped full of paralyzing and heart-stopping chemicals has in fact departed this life. Sounds fairly simple. But come to think of it, what if the doctor finds a pulse? That would put our trusty doc in the awkward position of signaling, "Zap him again!"

But the controversy of late hinges on that issue of pain. Stephens concludes, not unreasonably, that the doctor attending an execution should keep a lookout for signs of suffering.

There's bound to be some discomfort, to use the term favored around doctors' offices, when they strap you down and poke holes in your arm with the goal of putting out your lights forever. But lethal injection is not supposed to turn into such an ordeal that it breaches the constitutional rule against punishments that are cruel and unusual. In other words, the infliction of death is supposed to be sufficient punishment in itself. That's why we've moved away from execution methods that routinely set people on fire or cause them to asphyxiate in agony.

There are underlying problems with the death penalty in any case when some murderers -- maybe they had the money for a first-rate legal defense -- are sent off to serve life sentences while others await the needle. And we've seen as well that the courts can make mistakes -- mistakes that couldn't be remedied once a condemned inmate's life was taken.

Yet it's because of the pain question that we're now seeing executions postponed across the country. North Carolina has been in a holding pattern because its Medical Board, which sets ethical standards for doctors, says that a doctor actually has no business doing anything to facilitate an execution. The Council of State, headed by Governor Easley, is being asked to reconsider its approval of an execution procedure that requires a doctor to monitor the inmate's level of consciousness and be ready to intervene if the ordeal could become torturous.

Dr. Philip Boysen, anesthesiology department chair at the UNC School of Medicine, testified in a hearing that an inmate undergoing lethal injection in North Carolina is at risk of chemically burned tissue and conscious suffocation. Because the person would be paralyzed, he would not be able to signal that he was hurting.

And a Cary veterinarian, Kevin Concannon, said he'd never use the required three-drug cocktail to put down an animal. Too much risk of suffering. Yes, we know that sick old Rover didn't kill anybody and deserves a merciful, dignified death. But even a murderer being deprived of his life remains a human being. If we don't treat him humanely, it drags us down to his level.

Under the North Carolina scheme, a doctor would watch a brain-wave monitor to ensure that the inmate was unconscious. But the state's monitor shouldn't be used to make such a judgment without a doctor considering other evidence, the machine's manufacturer says. And despite a federal judge's order that the state could proceed with two executions only with a doctor engaged in the process, the doctor who was on duty testified that he didn't watch the monitor at all -- and wouldn't take any active role.

If this all amounts to a pluperfect legal mess, no wonder the U.S. Supreme Court has become involved. It agreed last week to hear a case from Kentucky in which two death row inmates argue that lethal injection as now practiced can't get over the constitutional bar because it poses a risk of unnecessary pain. Unnecessary, because other drugs would do the job more or less pain-free.

The Council of State, which meets Tuesday, ought to be glad that the high court has given it a good excuse to hold fire. Surely there's no need to jump the gun by reaffirming an execution procedure that the justices will soon review. The politicians on the council can be confident that the good folks who run Central Prison won't let any death row inmates go wandering off where we can't find 'em.

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