Legal Commentary

I just came across this fascinating oped in today's NYT by Christian Longo. Longo is on death row in Oregon, and as, he says, he is guilty of killing his wife and children. As an ostensibly contrite murderer, he is trying to make the best of his situation: he has abandoned his appeals and is trying to persuade  prison officials in Oregon to allow him to donate his organs upon his execution. The officials, however, have said no.

The officials have invoked several rationales for denying his request so far. Among them: increased likelihood of diseased organs, safety, inability to give informed consent, etc. Longo, however, has an interesting website, and the site addresses these various concerns. Importantly, Longo is not the only person on death row who would like to volunteer his organs. Nonetheless, there are no protocols in place to allow this life-saving altruism to unfold. 

Notwithstanding the substantial attention it receives, the death penalty itself is slowly dying in the United States as an imposed punishment. (So sayeth Columbia's Jeff Fagan at least, and it is a demise I welcome as a retributivist against the death penalty.) Nonetheless, I wonder whether the institution of the American death penalty would be "healthier" if death row inmates were permitted to donate their organs. If they were, my suspicion is that death penalty advocates would find a whole cluster of new supporters. Conversely, I worry that opponents of the death penalty will oppose organ donation efforts simply because it will politically imperil the demise of the death penalty.  Perhaps these worries are misplaced, but I can't quite put them aside after reading Longo's eloquent oped and interesting website--which, by the way, raises its own many questions of how a death row inmate becomes a policy entrepreneur with a paypal account anyway, but that's a topic for another day.