Arthur Zitrin, a leading bioethicist who sought to discipline doctors who administered lethal injections to condemned prisoners, died on Saturday at his home in Great Neck, N.Y. He was 101.

The cause was chronic lung disease complicated by a stroke, according to his son, Richard, a lawyer and a professor of legal ethics at the University of California Hastings College of the Law.

In 2005, after a state board dismissed his complaint against a doctor who had performed an execution, Dr. Zitrin filed a lawsuit demanding that the Georgia Composite State Board of Medical Examiners punish any doctors who help carry out capital punishment.

The Georgia courts dismissed his lawsuit, arguing in 2007 that Dr. Zitrin was not an aggrieved plaintiff. But the issue, which developed only when states sought more humane methods of applying the death penalty, percolated.