CALIFORNIA — The state of California issued a stay of execution for Michael Angelo Morales on Feb. 21, 2006, halting what would have been the next execution and igniting a debate that has defined the state’s two-decade moratorium on capital punishment. The move began the state’s twenty-year-long pause on executions, “throwing into the spotlight the tension between physician participation in executions and their pledge to show ‘the utmost respect for life,’” as reported by the Death Penalty Information Center.
The Death Penalty Information Center references Professor Deborah Denno, author of The Lethal Injection Quandary, who stated that “the events surrounding Morales’ impending fate brought to the surface the long-running schism between law and medicine, raising the question of whether any beneficial connection between the professions ever existed in the execution context. History shows it seldom did. Decades of botched executions prove it.”
Just weeks before Morales’ scheduled execution, he and other prisoners on California’s death row “brought a legal challenge in federal district court to the state’s planned method of execution.” The Death Penalty Information Center highlights that at this time, the state “used a three-drug approach to lethal injections.”
They go on to explain that “California’s method began with injection of a sedative, sodium thiopental, to render the prisoner unconscious. Next, a paralytic drug, pancuronium bromide, was injected, which was intended to paralyze the muscle system and stop the prisoner’s breathing. Finally, the injection of potassium chloride was used to stop the heart.” Thus, when using this three-drug cocktail, “death should result from an anesthetic overdose causing respiratory and cardiac arrest, while the prisoner is unconscious.”
The Death Penalty Information Center reports that in the legal challenge, Morales “argued that the combination of drug choices and the procedure by which the drugs would be administered — absent any oversight by medically trained personnel — created a ‘foreseeable and undue risk’ that he would experience unnecessary pain in violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.”
In the evidentiary hearing for his claim, the Death Penalty Information Center notes that Morales’ lawyers “highlighted state records that indicated at least six individuals lethally injected in California had possibly been conscious prior to receiving the second and third drugs.”
On Feb. 14, 2006, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel responded by giving two options. The first was to “address Mr. Morales’ concern about the three-drug protocol,” and the second was to “have medical experts on hand to verify that Mr. Morales was unconscious prior to administering the second and third drugs in the protocol.” According to the Death Penalty Information Center, “the state chose the second path,” and subsequently hired two anesthesiologists to “perform that function.”
Despite being appointed, “both physicians recused themselves just hours before Mr. Morales’ scheduled execution after learning they were expected to assist directly with the execution.” The anesthesiologists stated that they “contemplated a positive role that might enable us to verify a humane execution protocol for Mr. Morales; what is being asked of us now is ethically unacceptable. As a result, we have withdrawn from participation in this current process,” as recounted by the Death Penalty Information Center.
Professor Denno discusses that “[a]s Judge Fogel would later explain, there had been ‘a disconnect’ between the anesthesiologists’ and the court’s ‘expectations’ of what doctors’ roles should be,” the Death Penalty Information Center outlines.
Morales ended up receiving “an automatic stay of execution,” with Judge Fogel later ruling on “additional evidentiary hearings in the fall of 2006,” deciding that “California’s lethal injection protocol was problematic in that it could lead to unconstitutional outcomes,” as mentioned by the Death Penalty Information Center.
Since the scheduling of Morales’ execution, “California has not scheduled the execution of anyone.” The Death Penalty Information Center states that “Gov. Gavin Newsom enacted an official moratorium on the death penalty in March 2019.”
Professor Denno emphasizes the consequences of this decision, discussing how “[i]mmediately, medical societies protested the Morales court’s recommendation and the ethical quandaries it posed.” The Death Penalty Information Center mentions that “according to Professor Denno, the American Medical Association, the American Society of Anesthesiologists and the California Medical Association were ‘united in their opposition to doctors joining executioners.’”
The Death Penalty Information Center additionally remarks that “Mr. Morales’ lawsuit inspired similar litigation nationally, including Baze v. Reese (2008), in which the Supreme Court upheld Kentucky’s similar three-drug protocol and laid the legal framework for prisoners to show an Eighth Amendment violation of a method of execution.”
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