Missouri officials fought to keep the moment from happening.
From
behind a screen in a Kansas City court June 5, the doctor who devised
and supervised the state’s lethal injection procedure 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.”
And that turns out not to be all.
The
Post-Dispatch has confirmed the man behind the screen was Dr. Alan R.
Doerhoff, 62, of Jefferson City. Two Missouri hospitals won’t allow him
to practice within their walls. He has been sued for malpractice more
than 20 times, by his own estimate, and was publicly reprimanded in
2003 by the state Board of Healing Arts for failing to disclose
malpractice suits to a hospital where he was treating patients.
It is unclear how much U.S. District Judge Fernando Gaitan Jr. was told
before he strongly questioned the doctor’s qualifications — and whether
Missouri was delivering unconstitutionally cruel punishment in its
death chamber.
Doerhoff’s reprimand was no secret to Attorney General Jay Nixon’s
office. Nixon’s office, which fought to keep Doerhoff’s identity a
secret in death penalty appeals, signed off on the discipline.
From 2000 to 2004, the board doled out the same or worse discipline to
only 2 percent of the state’s practicing physicians.
A public reprimand can have bad consequences, veteran physicians say.
It may be a red flag that causes a hospital to investigate further
before conveying privileges.
Typically, if a doctor is cited for concealing malpractice complaints,
it could signal to an insurer that “maybe his skills are not what
they’re looking for,” said Dr. Robert Gibbons, president of the
Metropolitan Medical Society of Greater Kansas City.
“Doctors don’t take it lightly,” he said.
But the rebuke from one arm of Missouri government did not affect
Doerhoff’s status with another arm, the Department of Corrections.
Even after the reprimand, Doerhoff, who had supervised 48 executions,
continued to supervise six more. And he had prepared injections for a
seventh — Michael A. Taylor, who raped and murdered a teenager in
Kansas City in 1989. It was Taylor’s appeal that led to Gaitan’s
landmark order.
A deeper dive into court records shows that Doerhoff made false
statements in at least two different court cases about his history of
mistakes.
In one case, he was to be the expert witness for a woman suing a
Tennessee surgeon in Nashville for allegedly botching a bladder repair.
But lawyers dropped the suit just before the trial when the judge ruled
that he would allow evidence that Doerhoff had misrepresented a
disciplinary action taken against him.
No problem for ex-director
Gary B. Kempker, who served as director of the Missouri Department of
Corrections under Gov. Bob Holden from 2001 to 2005, said he spoke with
Doerhoff before each of the 16 executions over that time.
He said he never knew Doerhoff had a disability or had been reprimanded by the Board of Healing Arts.
Doerhoff had been involved with executions long before Kempker took
over as director, he said, and Kempker said he saw no reason to
question or replace the doctor.
Doerhoff’s role was to supervise the injections, but he did not push the plunger.
Kempker, a former police chief in Jefferson City, said he had known
Doerhoff from living in the same small city. He also knew other members
of Doerhoff’s family, prominent professionals who included Doerhoff’s
wife, Adelia, an anesthesiologist, brother Carl, a general surgeon, and
brother Dale, former president of the Missouri State Bar Association.
Alan Doerhoff was the only one of them involved in executions, Kempker said.
“He had been trusted by the Department of Corrections for a long time,” Kempker said.
“I would say it was very humane and it was a process that I . . . know
all the staff took extremely seriously about our legal mandate,” he
said.
‘I don’t do them’
When a reporter approached Doerhoff at his home Thursday and asked
about his role in executions, he said, “Read my lips: I don’t do them.”
Then he shut the door.
The Post-Dispatch asked Friday to speak with Attorney General Jay Nixon
about his office’s defense of Missouri’s lethal-injection process, its
efforts to conceal Doerhoff’s identity in court and whether he knew
about the reprimand.
The department said Nixon was unavailable, but issued this statement:
“The doctor who administers this procedure was hired and retained by
the Department of Corrections. We will continue to defend this method
of execution against constitutional challenges. All questions about the
qualifications of this doctor would be better addressed by those who
hired and retained him.”
Larry Crawford, the director of the Department of Corrections appointed
by Gov. Matt Blunt in January 2005, did not respond last week to a
request to be interviewed.
The Post-Dispatch asked the department July 17 for records of the
state’s payments to the physician who supervises the lethal injections.
The Missouri Sunshine Law requires public bodies to respond to requests
for records within three days; the cause of any delay beyond that must
be explained in detail.
The department, through its spokesman Brian Hauswirth, responded three
days later that it was gathering records and needed seven working days
to review them. It has not responded to the newspaper’s requests to
explain the delay.
In a previous interview, Crawford said that he was concerned that
revealing the execution doctor’s identity would expose him to
harassment, even put him in physical danger.
Crawford said he was grateful to have a doctor participate in something
that most physicians avoid as a matter of medical ethics.
Kent Gipson, of the Public Interest Litigation Clinic in Kansas City,
questioned exactly what the state sought to protect with its secrecy.
He suggested, “It was to hide the embarrassment of hiring somebody with
that many problems.”
Said Gipson, who has represented Missouri inmates appealing death
sentences, “It sounds to me that if that’s the best they can do, that’s
sort of a sad commentary on how the department does business.”
Lawsuits and settlements
According to statements Doerhoff made in regard to Taylor’s appeal,
corrections officials first consulted with him in 1989, when George
Mercer became the first Missouri inmate to be executed in 24 years. The
state had purchased a lethal injection machine. Doerhoff said he
suggested changes to the injections planned for Mercer.
In his deposition, Doerhoff said he overhauled Missouri’s
lethal-injection protocol at the request of corrections officials after
a debacle on May 3, 1995, when it took more than 30 minutes for the
state to execute Emmitt Foster.
Foster “was a drug addict and they could not get an IV line in,”
Doerhoff explained in the deposition. “They finally put the needle in
his thumb . . . so it was a prolonged execution which caused a lot of
embarrassment and it should not have happened.”
He then stayed on as a long-term contractor. In court filings, he
described his role as preparing the injections, inserting the
intravenous line, ensuring proper functioning of medical equipment and
providing medical support for the offender and witnesses. Other
staffers actually injected the drugs, he wrote.
Doerhoff spoke in a malpractice suit filed against him about what else
was happening in his life during 1995: He had a heart attack, he was $4
million in debt and was depressed.
On top of that, a woman sued Doerhoff in St. Louis Circuit Court that
May, alleging that he was having sex with her while she was under his
care, that he performed an operation to restore her virginity and other
sex-related procedures, and that he gave her an abortion in a Jefferson
City hotel room.
The case was settled with the woman being paid $100,000 in an agreement
in which Doerhoff admitted no wrong, according to court records. She
suggested in a recent interview that her lawyer fabricated some of the
claims.
In a 1998 deposition, Doerhoff said he had been sued about 20 times
after as many as 35,000 surgeries. He mentioned a settlement paid in
one, and other records show at least four more settlements plus a
judgment for $262,000 that he appealed and lost.
Operated on inmates
Doerhoff’s work for the Department of Corrections goes back to at least
the mid-1970s. He and his brother, Carl Doerhoff, had a contract to
perform surgeries on Missouri prisoners. Each also has served as
medical examiner in Cole County, a title Carl Doerhoff now holds.
Contacted by phone, Carl Doerhoff said he had no knowledge about who
may have been involved with executions, and otherwise declined to
comment.
Alan Doerhoff participated in more than half of Missouri’s executions —
54 out of 105 — since the Department of Corrections took over the
responsibility from counties in 1938.
Records indicate the Department of Corrections paid him $33,020 since
mid-2001, typically in checks of $2,000 that were issued a few weeks to
a few months after each of the past 17 executions. Earlier pay records
were not available.
Doerhoff has testified that he brought special knowledge to the death
chamber. “I was the only physician available anywhere to ask about how
and what,” he said in a deposition in Taylor’s appeal. “No one has any
experience (with the execution drugs) so I have to be the authority, I
guess.”
It was that deposition in June that led to a moratorium on Missouri
executions. A U.S. Supreme Court decision made it easier for death-row
inmates to file suits challenging lethal injection as
unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment.
Lawyers for Missouri’s condemned inmates have seized upon that issue in
the past year, claiming that Missouri inmates were not being
sufficiently numbed before the final two injections in the three-drug
cycle. The reasoning is that if the condemned is not properly numbed by
the first drug, paralysis from the second could make it impossible to
communicate pain from the third.
The argument gained traction with Gaitan after the state acknowledged
during Taylor’s appeal that its own logs of the chemicals given to
prisoners were incorrect. Over Nixon’s objection, Gaitan allowed
Taylor’s legal team to depose Doerhoff.
To comply with an earlier protective order that sealed Doerhoff’s
identity, Gaitan allowed Doerhoff to testify from behind a screen and
arranged for identifying references to be blacked out of public
records.
Though court records have cloaked his name, they left enough clues to
identify Doerhoff. Interviews with three men who had official roles at
executions, including Kempker, confirmed Doerhoff’s name.
Misrepresentations
Some of Doerhoff’s problems are a matter of public record.
In August 1997, a letter from Lake of the Ozarks General Hospital
informed Doerhoff that his request for active staff status was denied
and that his privileges were revoked. The letter accused Doerhoff of
failing to disclose malpractice claims against him, misrepresenting how
many cases were brought against him, and of having an “extensive”
history of cases he did disclose.
The letter, signed by Michael E. Henze, the hospital’s chief executive,
said the hospital had found a history of poor record keeping by
Doerhoff at another hospital and that there were “continuity of care
concerns” at more than one hospital.
Henze sent a second letter, to the Board of Healing Arts, saying the
hospital’s decision was based on “Dr. Doerhoff’s material
misrepresentations, misstatements, and omissions from his applications
for medical staff membership and corresponding clinical privileges.”
A year later, Doerhoff was contacted by Stephen Doughty, a lawyer in
Nashville representing a woman in a malpractice claim against a surgeon
and a hospital. Doerhoff agreed to be paid in exchange for his
testimony as an expert that the surgeon had not used the standard of
care required in a bladder repair. The plaintiff, Katrinka Stalsworth,
claimed that she was in constant pain from severed nerve endings.
In a deposition on Nov. 23, 1998, the defense lawyer, Phillip North, asked Doerhoff where he practiced.
“Well, I’ve always had staff privileges at (Hermann) Hospital and Lake
Ozark Hospital,” he said. “They are hospitals I helped organize.”
Later, North revisited the issue. “These . . . are full privileges, no qualifications, no restrictions or anything like that?”
Doerhoff: “Lake Ozark, I no longer have staff privileges there. There’s
too much to do. . . . I helped build the Lake hospital, but I had not
admitted a patient there for about 10 years and after a heart attack,
my wife and I decided that we were going to retire and move to the
lake, so I informed the Lake hospital I would be moving there, and they
took away my staff privileges.”
Doerhoff said the hospital gave no reason for taking away his
privileges. “The surgeon that was on the credentials committee saw me
as a threat, and he wanted the hospital to hire him as a partner, so he
terminated my privileges.”
The defendant secured a copy of the letter revoking Doerhoff’s
privileges. Just before the trial was to begin, the judge ruled that he
would admit it as evidence, which Doughty said he saw as a crucial blow
to Doerhoff’s credibility.
“He was our expert witness and . . . now there was some question about
the truthfulness of his answers,” said Doughty. “It was not the kind of
thing you want to find out about on the eve of the trial.”
Doughty withdrew the case.
Accused of malpractice
A year later, Doerhoff was the defendant in a malpractice case. John
Kerr, a minister in Jefferson City, accused Doerhoff of damaging his
stomach during an appendectomy.
Kerr’s lawyer, John Beger of Rolla, issued written questions to
Doerhoff to clarify matters of evidence. He asked Doerhoff, “Have you
now or at any time in your career had your license or staff privileges
revoked, terminated, suspended, or limited in any way?”
Doerhoff’s reply: “No.”
Beger said he obtained the Lake of the Ozarks letter — as well as a
transcript from Doerhoff’s deposition in the Tennessee case — and knew
that the answer was false.
Beger filed a motion to compel Doerhoff to turn over records pertaining
to his hospital privileges, writing that he believed Doerhoff’s written
answer was “incorrect.” Within days, the suit was settled for an
undisclosed sum.
In May 2000, Doerhoff’s request for privileges was denied at St. Mary’s
Health Center in Jefferson City. The hospital alleged that he had
failed to fully disclose malpractice cases filed against him. Doerhoff
then withdrew his application from St. Mary’s and did not appeal.
The matter was reported to the Board of Healing Arts, which opened a
discipline case against Doerhoff. The two sides settled in 2003 with
Doerhoff agreeing to his penalty — a public reprimand.
Doerhoff is now on staff at a hair-removal business in Jefferson City
and has made trips with groups of physicians to treat the Third World
poor.
In a deposition in Kerr’s suit in 1999, Doerhoff said he was looking forward to the new challenge of working overseas.
“It’s really difficult to find surgeons that can operate under
difficult circumstances,” he said. The mission group “needs people that
are able to go into a very primitive area and function without a lot of
support. So I’m the type of person they’re looking for.”
“So it’s a lot more interesting than sitting around in Jeff City waiting to die.”
| 314-340-8337
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Dr. Alan R. Doerhoff timeline
1969: Doerhoff graduates from medical school at
University of Missouri with a specialty in general surgery Mid-1970s to
mid-’90s: He works as surgeon on contract for Department of Corrections
1989: Michael A. Taylor and second man admit
kidnapping 15-year-old Ann Harrison from school bus stop in Kansas
City, raping her and slitting her throat. Taylor is sentenced to death.
1989: Doerhoff advises corrections officials on lethal injections as state resumes executions after 24 years.
1995: He revises execution procedure after problem
with condemned’s veins leads to 30-minute execution. Becomes permanent
contractor for corrections department.
1997: Lake of the Ozarks General Hospital denies Doerhoff staff privileges
1998: Doerhoff claims in a deposition that he’s
"always had staff privileges" at the Lake hospital, then, under
questioning, says they were revoked by a surgeon who saw him as a
threat. He is discredited as plaintiff’s expert witness in Tennessee
malpractice case, which then collapses.
1999: In written questions from a plaintiff alleging
malpractice, Doerhoff is asked if he’s ever had hospital privileges
revoked. He answers "no." After the plaintiff moves to compel him to
turn over records, the case is settled.
2000: St. Mary’s Health Center in Jefferson City
denies Doerhoff privileges, saying he failed to disclose malpractice
cases from 1994-99.
2003: Doerhoff is reprimanded by Missouri Board of
Healing Arts over claim that he failed to disclose past malpractice
suits to St. Mary’s.
Jan. 31, 2006: U.S. District Judge Fernano Gaitan Jr. rejects Taylor’s appeal that lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment.
April 26, 2006: U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear
lethal injection concerns in another case, opening door to further
appeals by Taylor that end up back in Gaitan’s court in Kansas City.
June 26, 2006: Gaitan orders Taylor’s execution
halted, citing concerns about problems with dyslexia and dealing with
numbers that are admitted to in deposition by execution doctor "John
Doe I," who in fact is Doerhoff. Gaitan demands execution procedure
overhaul and use of board-certified anesthesiologist.
July 14, 2006: Corrections officials tell Gaitan they
have made changes but cannot find an anesthesiologist to participate.
Eleven days later, they appeal his order to the 8th Circuit Court of
Appeals in St. Louis.
July 26, 2006: Gaitan says the state’s proposal is an
improvement, but that "there continue to be inadequacies with the
personnel required to monitor and oversee" the death penalty
