The St. Louis Post-Dispatch recently uncovered hospital files indicating that Dr. Alan R. Doerhoff, a Missouri physician who assisted with the state’s executions and who developed the state’s lethal injection protocol, gave misleading answers during a 1999 malpractice suit about having his hospital privileges revoked. In 1998, Doerhoff’s medical privileges were revoked from the Lake of the Ozarks General Hospital. Doerhoff was also denied privileges at St. Mary’s Health Center in Jefferson City in 2000, and he had been sued over 20 times for malpractice throughout his career. He was also reprimanded in 2003 by the state Board of Healing Arts for failing to disclose malpractice suits against him.

Doerhoff, who devised Missouri’s lethal injection procedure and supervised over 50 executions, gained notoriety when he testified last year that he was dyslexic and often confused the names and amounts of the lethal injection drugs. He also changed the lethal injection protocol, which was not written down, at will. A Missouri federal judge found this so troubling that he halted lethal injections in the state.

Doerhoff originally testified anonymously, but his name was revealed by the Post-Dispatch, instigating a law to protect the identities of those who participate in Missouri executions. While the state contends that the law is to protect the safety of executioners, Kent Gipson, of the Public Interest Litigation Clinic in Kansas City, suggested to the Post-Dispatch that instead “it was to hide the embarrassment of hiring somebody with that many problems.”

According to the Post-Dispatch, Dr. Doerhoff is now on staff at a hair-removal business in Jefferson City and has made trips with groups of physicians to treat the Third World poor.
(“Lake hospital’s letters deal crucial blow to credibility of execution doctor,” by Jeremy Kohler, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 20, 2008). See Lethal Injection and Supreme Court.