- Playing
- An End to Capital Punishment?
- From
- Dick Meister
If doctors everywhere would refuse to take part in executions -- as two doctors in California just did -- that could be the end, at last, of capital punishment in the United States. Doctors are needed to verify that particular executions do not violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment by causing unnecessary pain.
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Related Pieces
Piece Description
If doctors everywhere would refuse to take part in executions -- as two doctors in California just did -- that could be the end, at last, of capital punishment in the United States. Doctors are needed to verify that particular executions do not violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment by causing unnecessary pain.
Broadcast History
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Transcript
There?s finally genuine hope that we could at last be rid of the barbaric practice of capital punishment, thanks to two doctors who refused to take part in a recently scheduled execution in California.
The doctors had been assigned to certify that the state?s planned killing of a rapist-murderer, Michael Morales would not violate the Constitution?s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
The doctors had agreed to monitor the execution to make certain Morales remained unconscious after being injected with lethal chemicals -- the method of execution in most states. But the doctors pulled out after a district judge, Jeremy fogel, ruled they would have to intervene personally to help further sedate Morales if they determined he was still conscious and feeling pain. The doctors said to do that would be medically unethical .
The state was left with no choice but to try an option th...
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Timing and Cues
INTRO: Commentator Dick Meister sees a chance for abolition of the death penalty.
OUTRO: Dick Meister is a veteran San Francisco journalist.
