Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Sentencing Law and Policy

Criminal Law

: Sentencing Law and Policy

Creating a catch-22 for effective reform of lethal injection protocols

By Douglas A. Berman

As detailed in this press release, a "team of medical, ethical, and legal scholars argues in PLoS Medicine that in some US states the modification of lethal injection protocols is tantamount to experimentation upon prisoners without the prisoners' consent and without any ethical safeguards."  Here is more from the press release:Drs. Leonidas Koniaris and Teresa Zimmers (University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, Florida, USA) and colleagues lay out evidence obtained in litigation and from Freedom of Information act requests that suggests that at least 10 states are performing regimens that may be akin to human experimentation.... [E]ven as jurists demand lethal injection protocol changes, say the authors, "corrections officials, governors, and their medical collaborators are left in a legal and ethical quandary -- in order to comply with the law and carry out their duties, they are employing the tools and methods of biomedical inquiry without its ethical safeguards...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on June 11, 2008 (boomark / email).