COLUMBUS, Ohio — As an Ohio execution team tried to find a vein during an unsuccessful lethal injection attempt, prison staff sought help from a doctor — a move generally discouraged by ethical and professional medical rules — federal court papers show.

Dr. Carmelita Bautista said in a deposition filed in U.S. District Court that she had never before been involved in an execution.

“No, because I am a doctor,” she tells a lawyer questioning her. “We are supposed to help people who are sick. We're supposed to heal people as much as we can.”

Bautista said she tried to insert an IV catheter into Romell Broom's foot during the execution attempt Sept. 15 at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville. Gov. Ted Strickland postponed it after several hours because a useable vein could not be found.

The American Medical Association prohibits its members from participating in executions, including anything that would “contribute to the ability of another individual to directly cause the death of the condemned.” Dr. Rebecca Patchin, its board chairman, has said that being involved in capital punishment in any manner undermines a doctor's role as a healer.

But some doctors feel it's ethically permissible to participate in executions because they are helping inmates avoid pain and ensuring a peaceful death, said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center.

While Kentucky and Illinois rules say doctors shall not participate in executions, many states have “distant participation” by medical doctors to determine that death has occurred, Dieter said.

Bautista said Tuesday that she is not part of Ohio's execution team and does not feel as though she assisted in the execution process.

Bautista, who is on staff at Thomas Memorial Hospital in South Charleston, W.Va., was deposed in October in a long-standing lawsuit in which several inmates challenge Ohio's three-drug death penalty protocol as unconstitutional.

In a separate U.S. District Court case, Broom's lawyers have argued that the state should not be permitted to try to execute him a second time. A federal judge is to hear arguments in the case on Monday.