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Washington State & Lethal Injection

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"State's top prisons doctor quit over execution policy," is the title of a report in today's Seattle Times.About two years ago, Dr. Marc Stern tripped over a jarring line in Washington's death-penalty policy: As head doctor for the state's 16,000 prison inmates, he had to ensure the state's lethal-injection table was in working order before each execution. "This is ludicrous," Stern, then medical director for the Department of Corrections (DOC), remembers telling his boss. "I can't do this. I won't do this. I'm not allowed to do this." That was the beginning of Stern's unlikely evolution into a hero of the anti-death-penalty movement. He quit the DOC late last year on the eve of a scheduled execution, formally accused the DOC of illegally obtaining the lethal-injection drugs and, last month, was a star witness for death-row inmates challenging their executions in court...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on June 23, 2009 (boomark / email).