Death Row Inmates Could Redeem Themselves Through Organ Donation

By Alfred A. Messer

I spent four hours examining an inmate at a Georgia prison as requested by his new lawyer. The man had been convicted of murder, was facing the electric chair, and the attorney wanted formal psychiatric evaluation on record as appeals went forward.

As I concluded the interview, there was a message from his wife asking to see me, and I quickly agreed. We met at a coffee shop nearby and she brought along her perky 9-year-old daughter. The meeting was dignified and businesslike until the girl said spontaneously, "You know, my daddy's a good man."

I responded quietly, "Yes, but he must have done some bad things because he is in prison." She became even more insistent and voluble, "No, no, he's a good man."

Her mother stared at the ceiling. I did not feel it was proper to challenge the child further. She will absorb the awful truth in time.

The thought occurred to me that day that if he were executed, and if he volunteered to donate his heart, liver, lungs, kidneys, corneas, and bone marrow, his daughter could say to herself and others in the future, "Maybe my daddy did some bad things, but because of him, look at how many people are alive."

In order for death row inmates to become tissue and organ donors, a change in the law regarding execution would be necessary. Currently, four states mandate death in the electric chair: Georgia, Florida, Alabama and Nebraska. The U.S. Supreme Court has decided to review Florida's use of the electric chair as cruel and unusual punishment.

The petition before the court arose because several executions in Florida caused smoke and flame in the individual, requiring repeated electrical shocks. During the July 9, 1999 execution of Allen Lee Davis, who weighed 344-pounds, blood streamed out of his mouth and chest.

The petition notes that those dying in the electric chair will suffer "physical violence, disfigurement, and torment." In Georgia, Supreme Court Justice Leah Ward Sears has urged the legislature to change the method of execution to lethal injection.

She quotes from that petition to the U.S. Supreme Court as to "the grotesque physical violence indicative of both inhumanity and barbarity." She continues: "The Eighth Amendment's fundamental purpose is to protect the dignity of society itself from the barbarity of exacting mindless vengeance."

Our society has struggled with methods of execution. For centuries, it was hanging, and even today prisoners in Washington, Delaware, and New Hampshire may choose this form of death; then, it was the firing squad, and, in Utah, one could make this election.

A paper read at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, June 1899, deplored hanging as barbarous. Instead, the use of hydrocyanic acid was suggested: "The convicted criminal is to be taken to the death-chamber, which is to be connected by pipes with retorts generating the vapor, and some night when he is peaceably sleeping, it is to be suddenly turned on, and he will peacefully pass out of this mortal existence. The date is not to be fixed, but is to be at the discretion of the authorities, within certain limits, covering several months, so that it is presumed he will be spared the mental agony of expectation to a large extent."

This proposal for "painless capital punishment" was decried by many police officers. Even the Journal of the American Medical Association (September 1999)doubted that capital punishment, "should be made attractive.

The purpose of execution should be to eliminate harmful individuals, and it is to some extent an example and a deterrent."

If the Georgia legislature changes the method of execution to lethal injection, I propose one added coda: death by anesthesia administered by a licensed professional when the subject voluntarily agrees to surrender vital organs for transplant. The procedure would require adequate space for anesthesia and for surgeons to operate under sterile conditions.

Once the prisoner had made a voluntary declaration to donate his organs, and a date is set for execution, the prisoner could be kept in isolation -- men and women in prison are high-risk donors. Fluids could be drawn for blood and tissue typing, along with tests for syphilis, AIDS, hepatitis, cytomegalic virus, etc. Because there is plenty of time, transplant recipients could be identified and prepared more readily.

Currently, there are 120 prisoners on death row in Georgia. Realistically, the bulk of organ donations must come from greater public participation and acceptance as signified on the back of driver's licenses. Some crimes are so heinous that the victims' survivors demand revenge.

Death of the perpetrator by any means might satisfy this need.

Death by anesthesia, which allows the criminal to donate his organs, and help keep other people alive, makes it possible for redemption for the criminal and for his family.

Alfred A. Messer, M.D., formerly a professor of psychiatry at Emory University and psychoanalyst at Columbia University, now practices in Atlanta.

Copyright © 2000 The Salt Lake Tribune.