Behind the mask of the Mo. execution doctor

Jeremy Kohler, of the St. Lousi Post-Dispatch, uncovered the identity of the doctor responsible supervising Missouri's lethal injection procedure. Banned from practicing in two hospitals in the state, charged with malpractice over 20 times and having received a public reprimand in 2003 by the state Board of Healing Arts, Alan R. Doerhoff has overseen lethal injections since 1995 for the Missouri Department of Corrections. Troubling is the fact that the Attorney General Jay Nixon's office not only signed off on Doerhoff's reprimand, but simultaneously protected him by fighting to keep his identity hidden in death penalty appeals. In a recent case questioning whether the state's lethal injection protocol was consitutionally humane, Doerhoff "described it in terms so troubling to a federal judge that he ordered it halted. The doctor testified anonymously that he is dyslexic. That he sometimes confused names of drugs. That he sometimes gave inconsistent testimony. That the injection protocol was not written down, and that he made changes on his "independent authority.""