Dr. Kenneth Smith is a retired brain surgeon who lives in St. Louis, Missouri. Many years ago the state of Missouri allowed up to 6 of its citizens from the state to witness an execution. This is no longer a practice of the state, to allow people from the community to witness executions. In 1990, when it was policy, Dr. Kenneth Smith responded to the call for people of Missouri to witness the execution of George C. Gilmore. He was the only person from the community who responded to that call in attendance at Mr. Gilmore's execution. At that time, he did so as a silent objector to the execution, having been a longtime opponent of the death penalty. Missouri had only just begun executing death row inmates via lethal injection two years earlier, having used the electric chair as their primary mode of execution prior to 1988. At that time Dr. Smith was among a growing body of physicians who vehemently opposed the lethal injection of death row inmates, arguing that it was being carried out in the form of a medical procedure, one that was fraught with many serious complications, causing great pain to those executed in this manner. Lethal injection was argued to be a more humane method of execution, yet physcians and many others viewed it as more humane for the witnesses than the executed, giving the appearance of the condemned person slipping off to sleep, masking the pain that it caused.
The following excerpt is taken from a piece published by the Washington Post in 1990, soon after Dr. Kenneth Smith witnessed the execution of George Gilmore in Missouri. You can find the link for the full article below the excerpt.
"Minutes past midnight last Aug. 31, surgeon Kenneth R. Smith watched from behind glass in a Missouri prison as convicted murderer George C. Gilmore, strapped to a gurney with an intravenous line in his arm, was put to death by lethal injection.
Less than eight hours later, Smith walked into the operating room at St. Louis University Medical Center where he is chairman of neurosurgery.
What struck him was the eerie similarity between the two scenes.
"It looks the same," said Smith, who had driven the 150-mile round trip in one night to be an official witness at Gilmore's ex- ecution. What he saw in both rooms was a person lying on the operating table, connected to a heart monitor and IV lines, with anesthetic drugs going in.
"The only difference," Smith said of Gilmore's execution, "was that afterward, instead of going to the recovery room, he went to the hearse."
The above excerpt is taken from the article found at the link below: