Testimony and Statements

In a press release on June 9, the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) announced its pol­i­cy affirm­ing ​“that phar­ma­cists, as health­care providers who are ded­i­cat­ed to achiev­ing opti­mal health out­comes and pre­serv­ing life, should not par­tic­i­pate in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.” ASHP rep­re­sents 40,000 mem­bers, includ­ing phar­ma­cists who serve as patient-care providers in acute and ambu­la­to­ry set­tings. The orga­ni­za­tion also includes stu­dent phar­ma­cists and phar­ma­cy tech­ni­cians. The pol­i­cy was approved by the organization’s chief pol­i­cy-mak­ing body, the House of Delegates, dur­ing ASHP’s Summer Meetings this week in Denver. ​“This pol­i­cy makes…

Testimony of Robert Brett Dunham, Executive Director, Death Penalty Information Center before the Pennsylvania House Judiciary Committee in con­nec­tion with Pennsylvania’s death penal­ty mora­to­ri­um (Harrisburg, June 11, 2015)

In a recent op-ed in The Hill, three lead­ing phar­ma­cists wrote in sup­port of the res­o­lu­tion by the American Pharmacists Association (APhA), dis­cour­ag­ing phar­ma­cist par­tic­i­pa­tion in exe­cu­tions. Leonard Edloe, for­mer CEO of Edloe’s Professional Pharmacies, William Fassett (pic­tured), pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus of phar­ma­col­o­gy at Washington State University, and Philip Hantsen, pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus at the University of Washington School of Pharmacy, wrote, ​“The health­care com­mu­ni­ty is now unit­ed in oppo­si­tion to involve­ment in lethal injec­tion, a form of exe­cu­tion that mas­quer­ades as a med­ical pro­ce­dure yet vio­lates core val­ues of all healing…

On February 9, the House of Delegates of the American Bar Association unan­i­mous­ly passed two res­o­lu­tions call­ing for unan­i­mous juries in cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing and greater trans­paren­cy in lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures. Resolution 108A stat­ed: ​“Before a court can impose a sen­tence of death, a jury must unan­i­mous­ly rec­om­mend or vote to impose that sen­tence,” and, ​“The jury in such cas­es must also unan­i­mous­ly agree on the exis­tence of any fact that is a pre­req­ui­site for eli­gi­bil­i­ty for the death penal­ty and on the spe­cif­ic aggra­vat­ing fac­tors that have each been proven…

The lethal injec­tion of Dennis McGuire in Ohio in January ​“was not a humane exe­cu­tion,” accord­ing to Dr. Kent Dively (pic­tured), a San Diego anes­the­si­ol­o­gist who exam­ined records relat­ed to the exe­cu­tion, which took near­ly 30 min­utes to com­plete. Dr. Dively made the state­ment in an affi­davit relat­ed to a civ­il rights suit filed by McGuire’s chil­dren. McGuire was the first per­son in the coun­try to be exe­cut­ed using a com­bi­na­tion of mida­zo­lam and hydro­mor­phone. Dively stat­ed, ​“Neither of these drugs com­bined in the dos­es used can be depend­ed upon…

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon recent­ly called on all nations to take con­crete steps toward end­ing the death penal­ty. In his open­ing remarks at an event co-spon­sored by the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mr. Ban said, ​“Together, we can final­ly end this cru­el and inhu­mane prac­tice every­where around the world.” He not­ed that ​“more than four out of five coun­tries — an esti­mat­ed 160 Member States — have either abol­ished the death penal­ty or do not prac­tice it.” He encour­aged sup­port for the UN General Assembly’s res­o­lu­tion, first adopted…

In a dis­sent from a deci­sion by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit allow­ing Missouri’s exe­cu­tion of Michael Taylor on February 26, three judges sharply crit­i­cized the secre­cy of Missouri’s lethal injec­tion pro­to­col as a vio­la­tion of Taylor’s right to due process. The dis­senters would have stayed the exe­cu­tion to allow Taylor to obtain infor­ma­tion about the source of the exe­cu­tion drugs:

New Hampshire, which is con­sid­er­ing a bill to repeal the death penal­ty, only has one inmate on death row – Michael Addison, who was con­vict­ed of killing a police offi­cer. Now that offi­cer’s for­mer part­ner, John Breckenridge (pic­tured), has had a change of heart about the death penal­ty and is call­ing for an end to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Initially, Breckenridge sup­port­ed a death sen­tence for Addison, and even spoke in favor of the death penal­ty before the state’s death penal­ty com­mis­sion. However, he said his reli­gious faith and con­ver­sa­tions with Sister Helen Prejean…

Bernice King, the youngest daugh­ter of Martin Luther King, Jr., encour­aged New Hampshire to repeal the death penal­ty, say­ing that even though she lost her father and grand­moth­er to mur­der, ​“I can’t accept the judg­ment that killers need to be killed, a prac­tice that mere­ly per­pet­u­ates the cycle of vio­lence.” She called the death penal­ty ​“unwor­thy of a civ­i­lized soci­ety,” and warned that ​“ret­ri­bu­tion can­not light the way to the gen­uine heal­ing that we need in the wake of heinous acts of vio­lence.” She also point­ed to the num­ber of…