Should death row inmate Ronald Phillips be allowed to donate organs?

TORONTO – A death row inmate’s request to donate his organs has re-ignited the debate as to whether prisoners sentenced to be executed should be allowed to donate their organs.

Ohio’s governor John Kasich  delayed the execution of convicted child killer Ronald Phillips on Thursday after the inmate asked to donate a kidney to his mother and his heart to his sister earlier this week.

READ MORE: Ohio governor stays execution to assess organ donation request

Kasich said he wants medical experts to study whether Phillips could donate non-vital organs before being put to death.

Phillips was convicted of raping and killing his girlfriend’s three-year-old daughter in 1993. His execution date has now been rescheduled for July 2, 2014.

READ MORE: Killer on death row asks organs be donated to help mother, sister, others

This is not the first time a death-row inmate has made a request to donate his organs in the United States. In 2011, Christian Longo was turned down by authorities in Oregon after he asked to do the same.

Longo was convicted of murdering his wife and three children.

In a 2011 op-ed for the New York Times, Longo said he understood the public’s apprehension.

“I am seeking nothing but the right to determine what happens to my body once the state has carried out its sentence,” he wrote. “I am 37 years old and healthy; throwing my organs away after I am executed is nothing but a waste.”

In 2011, a moratorium was declared on Oregon’s death penalty, sparing Longo’s life.

According to the BBC, China’s state press claimed two-thirds of all transplant organs came from executed prisoners.

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In an editorial on Bustle.com, Jenny Hollander said the number of donors in the U.S. is far eclipsed by the people who need them, and indeed die every day waiting for them.

“If these inmates are to die anyway, isn’t it pragmatic to consider respecting their wishes, and save the lives of decent, ordinary citizens to boot?” wrote Hollander.

Alexandra Glazier, the head of the ethic committee for the United Network for Organ Sharing, said that allowing condemned prisoners to donate organs could “provide an inappropriate incentive to execute prisoner and could lead to significant human rights violations,” in a statement according to NBC.

“Any possibility that particular groups or individuals could receive death sentences to provide transplantable organs to the public would be completely objectionable,” she said.

The United Network for Organ Sharing says there are more than 120,000 Americans on organ waiting lists.

On Meeble.com, blogger Dee said that the fact that Philips is alive and can make this decision himself would make this his last personal act, “and perhaps his only opportunity to show remorse over the crime that put him on death row in the first place.”

“I suggest that if he were willing to donate his brain to science so that they could study it to find out what turned him into the kind of monster that could rape and murder a three year old, then yes, maybe something good could come of donating at least one organ,” she wrote.

– with files from The Associated Press