State execution team resigns due to lethal injection litigation

At least in Washington state, it appears that when the litigation going gets tough, the not-so-tough resign.  That’s what I take away from this local story, headlined “State’s execution team resigns, fearing identities would be revealed.”  Here are the basics:

Four people who have volunteered to administer lethal injections to death-row inmates at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla quit their positions this week, apparently worried that their identities could become public as a result of an ongoing court case to decide whether lethal injection constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

 The four resigned Tuesday, which was the deadline Thurston County Superior Court Judge Chris Wickham had set for the team’s records — detailing the members’ credentials, qualifications and experience in administering lethal drugs — to be submitted for his review.  The state is now without a lethal-injection team, and it’s unclear what effect the resignations will have on the court proceedings.

Death-row inmate Darold Stenson, who was sentenced to die in 1994 for killing his wife and business partner, filed his lawsuit last year, claiming that lethal injection can result in excruciating pain if not administered correctly….

The resignations are “a surprising and disturbing development,” said Scott Englehard, the attorney representing Gentry. “This issue has nothing to do with guarding their identities.” Englehard said the plaintiff’s attorneys already agreed that no identifying information related to the team members would be disclosed.  The records were to be reviewed in camera, a time-honored legal tradition in which only a judge sees sensitive and confidential documents and then decides what information attorneys will be privy to, he said.  His client and the other plaintiffs have a right to inquire about the team’s “experience or qualifications to properly carry out a lethal-injection execution,” Englehard said.

This development reminds me of the practical impact that sometimes occurs from another kind of right-to-life protesting: the tendency of medical professions to stop being involved with abortions because of fear generated by protesters.  The passion of death penalty opponents often is similar to the passion of abortion opponents, and I sense that any persons involved with either the death penalty or abortions have a reasonable basis to fear that this passion may sometimes get expressed in disturbing ways.  For this reason, I have a hard time faulting the decision by these volunteers to resign, even though I still believe the slogan that quitters never prosper.