Yesterday JAMA published a new perspective I co-wrote with Bob Truog and Mark Rockoff “Physicians, Medical Ethics, and Execution by Lethal Injection“. In that article we make the case that the recommendations coming out of the Oklahoma botched lethal injection executions to require physician involvement would force physicians into an untenable medical ethical position. We also argue that it supports a kind of kabuki theater of medicalization, where execution becomes normalized.
Now comes a news report of a Utah lawmaker pushing to give those set to be executed the option of firing squad which he views as more humane than lethal injection. Many people will no doubt recoil at this notion. But here is my intentionally provocative question (and this is on my behalf not my co-authors): If you are in favor of capital punishment, wouldn’t a single close range shot to the head as a form of execution be, in some ways, more defensible than lethal injection? If you recoil at the notion of this being a way of doing execution, have you perhaps fallen for the kabuki theater of medicalization? Why not choose a method of execution that is more honest about the gravity (and perhaps the horror) of what we are doing rather than present something as somewhere on a continuum with sedation?