Death penalty, medical neglect under fire

The politicians and bureaucrats of the state of California are reeling from two serious blows to their prison system. The refusal of two doctors to administer a lethal injection to death-row prisoner Michael Morales caused an unprecedented postponement of his execution. And a federal judge completed the takeover of this state’s abysmal prison healthcare system by naming a well-known public health doctor as its federal receiver.

The state of California was ordered by a federal judge early in February to change its lethal injection method for the execution of Morales, based on a finding that this method is cruel and unusual punishment.

Death penalty foes and human rights activists say this is a very narrow ruling and have claimed for years that the death penalty itself is unconstitutional and should be abolished. According to Am nesty International, 122 countries have abolished the death penalty in law or practice. The U.S., true to its history of genocide and human rights abuse, has stubbornly refused to stop executing prisoners.

The refusal of two anesthesiologists to monitor Morales’s lethal injection forced the state to indefinitely postpone his execution.

The American Medical Association and other medical groups are opposed to the death penalty. According to the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, the postponement may have resulted in their long sought-after moratorium on the death penalty. The court ruling may affect executions in 36 other states that use the same combination of lethal injection drugs that California uses. A hearing is scheduled in federal court in early May.

On Feb. 14, U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson named Robert Sillen, the executive director of the Santa Clara County Health and Hospital System, to take over and run this state’s prison health care. Henderson made this bold move in response to shocking reports from legal monitors in a class-action lawsuit about medical neglect and abuse in the prison system. The lawsuit, Plata v. Schwarzen egger, filed by the Prison Law Office, brought to light countless acts of medical negligence and put the spotlight on the callous mistreatment of seriously ill state prisoners.

Also on Feb. 14, the California Senate Pub lic Safety Committee, in a special hear ing on the governor’s plans to build more prisons and jail cells, was extremely critical of this attempt to expand the prison state. Speakers from such groups as Calif ornia Prison Focus and Critical Resis tance strongly opposed any more prison construc tion and called instead for prison closures.

Prisoners, their family members and human rights activists are cautiously optimistic at these recent events and hope these small cracks in the prison-industrial complex will grow into big fissures in the largest and one of the most brutal prison systems in this country.

In another late-breaking development, the head “czar” of the California prison system, Roderick Hickman, has resigned after a 2-year stint. He originally came to the job promising great reforms in parole and programs for prisoners. Unfortu nately, he backed down on every promise that he made. Just another symptom of a decaying, brutal prison system.