One of the many cynical strategies against the death penalty is for opponents to first claim that medically qualified people must participate in lethal injections to avoid the possibility of the inmate being insufficiently anesthetized and then turn around and claim they must not participate due to medical ethics requirements.
This strategy has succeeded in keeping doctors and nurses out of the procedure in most states, but emergency medical technicians and not subject to the boards that regulate doctors and nurses. In Ohio, there is an EMS board, and the Catch-22 effort there suffered a setback yesterday.
This strategy has succeeded in keeping doctors and nurses out of the procedure in most states, but emergency medical technicians and not subject to the boards that regulate doctors and nurses. In Ohio, there is an EMS board, and the Catch-22 effort there suffered a setback yesterday.
Suzanne Hoholik reports for the Columbus Dispatch:
The Ohio EMS board has no authority over the emergency medical technicians who administer lethal drugs in state executions.
That's the opinion board lawyer Heather R. Frient made public yesterday during the board's meeting.
Board members asked Frient to determine whether these technicians were under their jurisdiction. Under state law, intermediate EMTs are not authorized to work with these drugs.
But these technicians are an exception, Frient said.
"They do not appear to be acting as EMTs in the performance of their execution duties," she wrote in the opinion.
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