I found this story today on the internet. The LPN is referred to as an "offender." Should a nurse on criminal probation be allowed to participate in the execution of an inmate? Is criminal probation relevant to the issue since the professional competence of the LPN was and has never been questioned?
Should a nurse be labeled by a criminal conviction and criminal probation for the remainder of one's career? Should criminal convictions impair a licensed healthcare professional's licensure and employability?
I am not a criminal defense attorney but I tell you I am getting more and more involved in the criminal law and procedure because I represent nurses who have been charged or convicted of crimes.
This is part of the article:
Before a Missouri executioner could go to Indiana in 2001 to help federal authorities put mass killer Timothy McVeigh to death, he had to take care of one detail:
He needed permission from his probation officer to leave the state.
The request, by a licensed practical nurse from Farmington, set off alarms within the Missouri Division of Probation and Parole. At least one supervisor spoke out to an agency administrator.
"As I stated to you previously, it seems bizarre to me that we would knowingly allow an offender, on active supervision, to participate in the execution process at any level," she wrote.
But that memo and others obtained by the Post-Dispatch show that high-level federal and state corrections officials did let the nurse make the trip — and continue to work on Missouri's lethal-injection team.
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