Rights to Receive Life Support Treatment

Rights of Death Row inmates to receive life support treatment

The law is constantly challenged with balancing conflicting interests in society. One of the most common of these conflicts occurs between individuals' need for liberty and society's need for safety and order. Throughout history, this conflict has come before the court in a variety of guises.

This paper explores one such conflict: the fairness in allocation of life support utilities to inmates serving on death row. As the scarcity of life support resources grows, their allocation raises a profound question of personal rights. Supreme Court precedents have established guidelines for preserving some rights of death row inmates. Several other rights including the right of a death row inmate to receive life support treatment have not. While many feel that it is unethical to refuse treatment to any human being, the logical group considers it absurd to put the health of a convicted criminal over that of an ordinary citizen This is a very pressing and unresolved issue that requires legal definition and guidance. In the following pages, we will review issues related to this subject.

First, a brief overview will be given on capital punishment and the legal medical rights of death row inmates. In conjunction with the medical rights still held by inmates, a section follows, which discusses the procedures that are followed in the allocation of organs. This section will explore controversial issues of the scarcity of resources relative to those in need of organs and how fairly resources are distributed to different classes of society. Finally, the study concludes with a mock court case that will incorporate the major themes of the preceding three issues and will give the opinions of the authors as interpreted from the research. The concluding position is supportive of the current law that has been previously established.

There have been a number of court cases that have examined the death penalty in its fullness. The U.S. Supreme Court has engaged in the role of scrutinizing the methods and procedures used by state prosecutors and judges in applying the sentence of death. Given the variations between states' laws regarding the circumstances that led to the sentencing of the "ultimate punishment," several capital cases have been taken to the U.S. Supreme Court for review in light of fairness and equality. One case in particular, which challenged states' methods of sentencing capital punishment, brought the death penalty to a halt across the nation. In 1972 the historic case of Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238. 33L.Ed. 2d 346 (1972), Furman challenged the application of Georgia's penalty claiming that the state's sentencing was arbitrary and therefore a violation of the Eighth Amendment. Furman argued that the Eighth Amendment demands an acceptable measure of consistency in sentencing decisions. The Supreme Court upheld Furman's case in light of "cruel and unusual punishment" as stated in the Eighth Amendment. This single case defined the unconstitutionality of all states' methods in the sentencing of the death penalty. An important distinction was made

that although the death penalty has never been regarded as unconstitutional, the courts ruling as defined here is the declaration of the unconstitutional discharge of the sentence. Furman's case ended a long history of sentencing the death penalty by judges and juries, which in many cases was due to race and class discrimination.

Not until four years later, in the case of Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976), were directive standards set for

the sentencing of capital punishment that invalidated the unconstitutionality theory that the death penalty was "cruel

and unusual punishment". The Supreme Court established in this case a method whereby the sentencing of the death

penalty by state courts would not violate the Eighth Amendment.

The variations in state laws have created a multitude of cases to be brought to the Supreme Court over the years concerning different interests in the rights of incarcerated people. This issue has become a heated topic of debate and has created the argument that certain state penal institutions are not honoring their inmates with the legal rights to which they are entitled. An even more serious issue creating further litigation is the medical treatment of incarcerated people relative to their entitled rights. Back in 1976 in the case, Estelle v. Gamble 429 U.S., the Supreme Court established the idea that a prisoner's medical needs were not to be deliberately ignored and untreated by officials.

Are prisoners entitled to have "top-of-the-line"