In a potentially significant development in the controversy over lethal-injection executions, the president of the American Society of Anesthesiologists has strongly urged members to “steer clear” of any participation in them.
Dr. Orin Guidry, president of the 40,000-member group, posted a four-page “Message From the President” on the organization’s website (www.asahq.org) Friday saying that anesthesiologists had been “reluctantly thrust into the middle (of a legal controversy),” and it was not their responsibility to solve problems created by the nation’s judicial system.
“Lethal injection was not anesthesiology’s idea,” wrote Guidry, who works at Ochsner Hospital in New Orleans. “American society decided to have capital punishment as part of our legal system and to carry it out with lethal injection. … The legal system has painted itself into this corner and it is not our obligation to get it out.”
In recent months, there has been a flurry of litigation over lethal injections. Lawyers for condemned inmates say that procedures being used in some states might cause unnecessary and excruciating pain in violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
Guidry, in a phone interview from his home, said he has been following the issue closely since mid-February, when California officials postponed the execution of Michael Morales after being unable to comply with a federal judge’s order to change the state’s lethal-injection procedures.
The physician, 61, said he has never taken a position on the death penalty and emphasized: “I am not now.”
