A commonly held belief over in the Supreme Court [declines to hear] same sex marriage cases.[plus further developments (Ed.)] is that clerks that refuse to issue licenses to SSM couples should either be fired or resign for failure to perform their duties. I agree with this position. However, should this apply to other government occupations that refuse to participate in lawful activities. I am thinking specifically of doctors assisting in the execution of prisoners although there are probably other examples.
Given:
The hippocratic oath (to do no harm) has no force of law
Executions are legal in the US in n (don’t know the actual number) states
Prison doctors are (presumably) government employees
Executions will occur with or without the doctor’s assistance
Why are they given a pass on not assisting? The wiki article on “Participation of medical professionals in American executions” has a quotation from the AMA that states:
Bolding mine.
Should we make an exception for doctor’s beliefs as the AMA does? I would argue that we should not. If you do not wish to carry out a lawful instruction from your employer, then you should find another employer. Resting on the “personal belief” pillar is no more appropriate for the medical profession than it is for a clerk.
I’m not executing anybody. Nor are any of my colleagues in Corrections Medicine. To do so would also violate the standards put out by the National Commission on Correctional Health Care.
Why am I given a pass for not assisting? Because the job duties as described by my employer never included executing anyone, or assisting in their execution. I just checked my official job description, and it ain’t there.
It’s tough enough finding competent primary care physicians to do Correctional health care. Add in a part about needed to assist in/perform executions, and there will be essentially no one to do the job.
The legal reason is that just because you work for somebody doesn’t mean you are required to obey any order they give. You only have to obey orders within the scope of the job you were hired for.
Qadgop, for example, was hired by the state to provide medical services in a prison. He wasn’t hired to man a wall tower or work in the kitchen or perform executions.
There are some exceptions, at least in New York, in emergency situations. Let’s say, for example, there was a fire and we had to evacuate a building full of prisoners into a yard. I could order somebody like Qadgop to leave their regular job and do something security related like collecting the ID cards of all prisoners as they enter the yard. And being as it’s an emergency, he’d have to do it.
But you’re not going to have an emergency execution.
It’s not so much that you can’t be ordered to do something outside of the scope of your job. It’s that you can quit. These people aren’t slaves.
I sympathize with pharmacists who disagree with providing birth control (though not really with bakers and other business owners who refuse services to gay couples), but the fact is that most pharmacists don’t mind. If you fire pharmacists who refuse legitimate services, or just allow them to quit, you can hire many others. But if you make “executioner” a job requirement for prison physicians, you will not be able to hire any prison physicians. None. It’s a matter of professional ethics, which means that the entire profession is off limits and that severely constrains the supply of would-be executioners, especially if you demand “hospital-style” executions and aren’t content with hangings, shootings and beheadings.
As an engineer, I deeply respect the ethics of the medical profession (not that I don’t have other issues with the medical industry). I wish other engineers would take the ethics of their professional society seriously. (IEEE code of ethics here.) But then we’d all be Snowdens.
RE: job descriptions. Every one that I have ever read mentioned “Other duties as assigned”. I have no idea how far these “other duties” can be extended.
I’m a little uncomfortable telling someone that their personal beliefs aren’t relative to their job duties simply because I could easily find someone to replace them.
Little Nemo, this would no doubt vary from state to state but I live in an employment at will state and my employer has made it abundantly clear to all employees that we can be terminated for any reason as long as we aren’t being discriminated against as a member of a protected class. Presumably, failure to fulfill an assignment (even one not mentioned specifically on my job description) would fall under this category.
What if they offered bonuses for successful executions?
It’s gotta be better than working in the Texas Panhandle.
BTW, aside from the Hippocratic Oath not having the force of law, there are many physicians who do not take the Oath (a good thing, seeing that otherwise no one would ever perform surgery for kidney or bladder stones).
Jackmannii, Hippocratic Oaf.
*I have considered a retirement business involving executions and laser tattoo removal. Prison business from the latter is likely to be minimal, though.
For one thing, your state doesn’t have a death penalty. If there were, there’s an ugly enough mood in the state government that it wouldn’t terribly surprise me if they changed the rules.
It also wouldn’t surprise me if you and every other prison doc refused and were fired or forced to resign. Ok, then there would be no prison doctors, but I have my doubts whether th legislature would give a damn until forced to do so by a court.
No one’s constitutional rights are being infringed by not having a doctor participate in an execution (at least according to current law, an argument could be made that they are but it isn’t the law as it stands).
OTOH, clerks refusing to issue licenses results in the government acting contrary to the law, which cannot be tolerated.
So, the government presumably could fire doctors for failing to perform that role, but they needn’t; whereas recalcitrant clerks must be replaced in order to prevent citizens’ rights from being infringed.
The difference between the clerks and the doctors is nothing more than supply . There are plenty of people who are qualified to be clerks who either don’t have any objection to issuing licenses to same-sex couples or whose objections aren’t strong enough to cause them to refuse to take/keep the job with such a requirement. That doesn’t appear to be the case for doctors and executions. You could fire all the prison doctors who refuse to particpate in executions ( which would probably be every one of them) and contract out for medical services or use outside clinics for all medical care- but in the end, you still will not have prison doctors particpating in executions so it would be a pointless exercise. Fire all the clerks who refuse to issue licenses ( which almost certainly would not be every one of them) and you could probably fill those jobs by close of business tomorrow.
Why can’t the state put out a Help Wanted ad for an medical professional to oversee executions?
Seems straightforward enough. Post the requirements and that’s it. It is a big world out there, there is probably someone who would do it. Hell, one person could do every single one in the US. We’ve never topped 100 in a given year since 1976 and more usually are around 50. If every state chipped in to pay that one person it’d be a good deal and relatively cheap for them…even including travel expenses.
Hush. How can I maintain my air of mystery and exoticness if you bring it down with facts?
The supreme court has already determined that depriving inmates of necessary medical care is cruel and unusual punishment. (Of course what constitutes necessary care is always being argued.) And states have found it much cheaper to have in-house medical care rather than job it out to local clinics and ERs, where care is MUCH more expensive (especially since every inmate trip out needs at least one if not two guards.) So if we Corrections docs aren’t there, expenses go waaaaay up real fast, outstripping the savings of not having us there.
I wonder how much time you can justify to go out to a hospital and kill a patient? Surely 4 hours minimum! 'Cuz if you look at it right, every civilian you’re allowed to kill is another half-day you get to stay out of that hellhole prison. Go to a nice old folks home on the lake on a Friday, knock off a couple of them and it’s almost the same as a three day weekend.
A lot of people would kill for a schedule like that.
