Woody Cavenaugh

This has been on the back of my mind for a while. I have slept on it, I have showered on it, I have driven on it, I have walked to my office thinking it over. The reasons I am pondering such an odd subject is the NC prison system requires a doctor on site during executions. The NC medical board says it will take action against any doctor who does so because it violates the Hippocratic Oath. The prison system went to court to try to force the medical board to not take action against the doctors. Their argument? "An execution is not a medical procedure."

I have thought this over and I agree with the prison system. Any fool can kill someone and the prisons are full of fools that do. Therefore they don't need a doctor on site at all. Fill the role the doctor had with the next guy in line for the procedure. Chances are if you are on death row, you've already had some practice killing someone, and you are going to be killed for it anyway in keeping with the bibles "Thou Shalt Not Kill" and "Eye for an eye" clauses. What's one more going to hurt. Plus they will already be familiar with the method of their own demise so they can face it more relaxed when their own time comes.

Of course it is actually more complicated than that. They want someone there to make sure that the guy being killed doesn't actually get hurt in the process, and they believe the doctor has some sort of leg up here. They are worried about the killing of someone being inhumane. I don't see the big issue. The Humane Society has occasion to put wayward pets down. They are very humane, everyone knows it. They even use "humane" in their name. If you kill the person the same way they kill the animals you would be humane about your killing and wouldn't have to worry about it. Again no doctor necessary.

If you are worried about if you actually successfully killed the guy, perhaps you are not ready to be in the killing business yet. Again, utilize your experts already in death row. They could teach you a thing or two about killing and if you still aren't sure, when the ambulance comes the next morning to haul the deceased to the morgue, while they are riding over they can run a few standard "are they still alive" test. Remember, no one survives embalming anyway, so if the guy is mostly dead he will be all the way dead once his blood is replaced with embalming fluid.

If he comes back from that he's a zombie, and we have ways of dealing with zombies.

Bottom line lets keep the doctors as far away from the state mandated killing as possible. It just isn't what they do.