Should part of the machinery of death be dyslexic?
Kent Scheidegger in this post over at Crime and Consequences seems eager to read Kansas v. Marsh (commentary here and here) as a sign that the Supreme Court might finally be ready “to stop tinkering with capital sentencing procedure.” His interesting post draws its start from Justice Blackmun’s famous farewell statement on the death penalty when he said he would “no longer tinker with the machinery of death.”
The tinkering talk is ironic at a time when, as detailed here and here, federal courts are literally tinkering with the machinery of death by reviewing, and sometimes demanding revisions to, states’ lethal injection protocols. Today I received from a helpful reader a copy of the decision from a federal district judge in Missouri which, in addition to documenting how that state has been conducting lethal injections, makes it very clear that some more tinkering is in order.
The Missouri lethal injection order is provided for download below, and here is just one part of the remarkable document:
[The physician that mixes the drugs used during the executions] readily admitted that he is dyslexic and that he has difficulty with numbers and oftentimes transposes numbers. [He] testified “it’s not unusual for me to make mistakes…. But I am dyslexic and that is the reason why there are inconsistencies in my testimony. That’s why there are inconsistencies in what I call drugs. I can make these mistakes, but it’s not medically crucial in the type of work I do as a surgeon.” (Depo. p. 25). The Court disagrees and is gravely concerned that a physician who is solely responsible for correctly mixing the drugs which will be responsible for humanely ending the life of condemned inmates has a condition which causes him confusion with regard to numbers. As the Court has learned, the process of mixing the three different drugs and knowing the correct amount of the drugs to dissolve in the correct amount of solution involves precise measurements and the ability to use, decipher, and not confuse numbers. Although [the physician] does not feel this is crucial in the type of work he does as a surgeon, it is critical when one is mixing and dissolving chemicals for a lethal injection.