One particular concern to opponents of physician participation in capital punishment is the role that health care providers have played in treating or reviving patients to render them fit for execution.
In a similar 1999 case in Texas, David M. Long attempted suicide by drug overdose two days before his execution date and prison authorities flew him from an intensive care unit in Galveston, on a ventilator, accompanied by a full medical team, to the death chamber in Huntsville.
He criticized it because a majority of the executions on the list, according to respondent, "did not involve the infliction of pain, but were only delayed by technical problems (e.g., difficulty in finding a suitable vein)".
[11] To protect participating physicians from license challenges for violating ethics codes, states commonly provide legal immunity and promise anonymity.
[11][12] The North Carolina Supreme Court ruled 4–3 that the Medical Board cannot discipline doctors who participate in executions, stating that the statutes providing for lethal injection are superior to ethical guides.
[13] The practice is proscribed in the Hippocratic Oath, an ethical guide for the medical profession, albeit with no legal or constitutional force, which states: I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan.