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Communist Vietnam's secret death penalty conveyor belt: How country trails only China and Iran for 'astonishing' number of executions

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Prisoners are dragged from their cells at 4am without warning to be given a lethal injection Vietnam's use of the death penalty has been thrust into the spotlight after a real estate tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to be executed in one of the biggest corruption cases in the country's history. Truong My Lan, a businesswoman who chaired a sprawling company that developed luxury apartments, hotels, offices and shopping malls, was arrested in 2022.

Clayton Lockett: Doctor involved in botched execution 'experimented' on inmate, suit claims

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Clayton Lockett
Family of Clayton Lockett, who was killed in prolonged execution, names doctor and says he violated rule established at Nuremberg trials

The family of Clayton Lockett, the death row inmate in Oklahoma who suffered a long and apparently traumatic execution in April, is suing a family doctor who they allege actively participated in the botched lethal injection process that killed him.

The legal complaint, lodged with the federal court for the western district of Oklahoma on Tuesday, names Dr Johnny Zellmer as a defendant both in his individual and official capacity. The lawsuit accuses him of engaging “in human medical experimentation in torturing Clayton Lockett to death”, and says that his participation in the execution was against international protocols established at the post-second world war Nuremberg trials of Nazi doctors.

The naming of Dr Zellmer under court privilege is a rare instance of the identity of a physician who allegedly participated in an execution coming to light. Death penalty states, including Oklahoma, go to great lengths to guard the secrecy of their execution teams.

The position of doctors is particularly sensitive as physicians take the Hippocratic Oath to show “utmost respect for human life”. Where doctors have been present in the death chamber, their role has in most cases been tightly limited to assessing whether the prisoner is unconscious and then officially pronouncing death.

However, in the case of Clayton Lockett, the state has admitted that a physician was present who actively took part in killing the prisoner. The report of the internal investigation into the Lockett execution reveals that the physician stepped in to finish the job after the paramedic who had initiated the execution failed to place the IV into Lockett’s veins.

“The IV access was completed by a physician licensed as a medical doctor,” the report said.

The direct participation of the physician in helping guide lethal drugs into Lockett’s body is an apparent violation of the Hippocratic Oath. It is also a breach of the voluntary code laid out by the American Medical Association that states that doctors should not play any role that contributes to the cause of death in a legallyauthorized execution.


Source: The Guardian, Ed Pilkington, October 13, 2014
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