The effects on those responsible for carrying out executions is often overlooked

February 2025

In discussions about executions the focus is, naturally enough, on the individual who is about to be put to death. We forget that there are many prison officers who are closely involved with those on death row, sometimes for many years, even decades. This post draws on material produced by the Death Penalty Information Center in the US for which we are grateful. The Salisbury group is focusing on the state of Oklahoma. We are grateful to group member Lesley for the work in compiling this.

Executions can cause prison staff to suf­fer psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­tress sim­i­lar to what vet­er­ans expe­ri­ence

after war. A 2022 NPR inves­ti­ga­tion found that cor­rec­tions offi­cers faced symp­toms such as insom­nia, night­mares, pan­ic attacks, sui­ci­dal thoughts, per­son­al­i­ty changes, and sub­stance abuse – all hall­marks or comor­bidi­ties of post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der. Of the 16 peo­ple NPR inter­viewed who par­tic­i­pat­ed in exe­cu­tions, none sup­port­ed the death penal­ty in their wake. Psychologists use the term ​“moral injury” to describe how com­mit­ting an act that con­tra­dicts one’s deeply held beliefs, such as caus­ing anoth­er person’s death, cre­ates a severe psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­rup­tion. Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell coined the term ​“executioner stress” to describe the spe­cif­ic men­tal impact of car­ry­ing out the death penalty. 

The stress may also extend to guards who do not par­tic­i­pate in the exe­cu­tion itself, but devel­op close rela­tion­ships with death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers over the course of decades work­ing on death row. Some cor­rec­tions offi­cers have remarked that they spend more time with the peo­ple on death row than their own fam­i­lies. They may come to see the con­demned pris­on­ers as friends, or wit­ness the pris­on­ers’ men­tal or phys­i­cal vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties. In stud­ies, offi­cers have expressed con­cerns about the arbi­trari­ness of the death penal­ty, not­ing that they had worked with many peo­ple with life sen­tences who com­mit­ted equiv­a­lent or worse crimes than the peo­ple the offi­cers helped put to death. 

“There is a part of the war­den that dies with his pris­on­er,”

The psy­cho­log­i­cal toll of per­form­ing exe­cu­tions is not a new phe­nom­e­non. Donald Cabana and Jerry Givens both con­duct­ed exe­cu­tions in the begin­ning of the mod­ern era, in the late 1970s and ear­ly 1980s, and went on to pub­licly oppose the death penal­ty. ​“There is a part of the war­den that dies with his pris­on­er,” Mr. Cabana often said.

Journalist Jennifer Gonnerman researched New York’s last four exe­cu­tion­ers, who over­saw the use of the elec­tric chair from 1913 through 1963, a peri­od dur­ing which hun­dreds of peo­ple were put to death. Several of the men expe­ri­enced med­ical issues around the time of exe­cu­tions, such as migraines or faint­ing spells. One, Robert Elliot, lat­er became a promi­nent death penal­ty abo­li­tion­ist. Two of the men, John Hulbert and Dow Hover, died by suicide. 

Yet prison staff have long faced a cul­ture of silence about exe­cu­tion-relat­ed trau­ma. ​“We don’t talk about it,” said Justin Jones, direc­tor of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections from 2005 to 2013, who joined the effort to increase the time between exe­cu­tions (see Oklahoma below.)  ​“Correctional offi­cers are pub­lic ser­vants on the low­est salaries in state gov­ern­ment, and they get home at the end of the day and just absorb it.” NPR’s inves­ti­ga­tion revealed that some exe­cu­tion team mem­bers had nev­er even told their fam­i­lies they par­tic­i­pat­ed. ​“We all knew to keep it silent,” said Catarino Escobar, who worked on the exe­cu­tion squad in Nevada. Mr. Escobar was strapped to the gur­ney when he played the pris­on­er dur­ing a prac­tice ses­sion, and he grew pan­icked and became con­vinced he was going to die. NPR found that only one of the offi­cers they inter­viewed had ever received men­tal health care relat­ed to their posi­tion, and even when care was offered, it was ​“over­whelm­ing­ly option­al” and ​“many of them avoid­ed ask­ing for it so as not to seem weak.” 

Oklahoma

In this con­text, uni­fied efforts by cor­rec­tions staff to address the psy­cho­log­i­cal effects of exe­cu­tions rep­re­sented a mile­stone. In March 2024 a group of nine for­mer Oklahoma cor­rec­tions offi­cials wrote a let­ter to Attorney General Gentner Drummond and, based on the detri­men­tal impact of the job and the lack of men­tal health sup­port, asked for an increase from a time of 60 to 90 days between executions. They not­ed that exe­cu­tion team mem­bers expe­ri­ence an increased risk of PTSD, sui­cide, and sub­stance abuse, and the gruelling prepa­ra­tion sched­ule puts staff mem­bers through­out the prison on edge due to ​“near-con­stant mock exe­cu­tions being con­duct­ed with­in earshot of pris­on­ers’ cells, staff offices, and vis­it­ing rooms.” With few state resources at their dis­pos­al, some employ­ees even resort­ed to talk­ing with defence men­tal health experts vis­it­ing the prison ​“about the dis­tress they are expe­ri­enc­ing due to the non­stop executions.” 

This com­pressed exe­cu­tion sched­ule also increas­es the risk of some­thing going wrong dur­ing the exe­cu­tion process because the stress cre­at­ed by each exe­cu­tion com­pounds the dif­fi­cul­ty of an already com­plex pro­ce­dure. If even a rou­tine exe­cu­tion can inflict last­ing harm on cor­rec­tions staff, the trau­mat­ic impact of a botched exe­cu­tion is expo­nen­tial­ly worse. Oklahoma has expe­ri­enced this harm on mul­ti­ple occa­sions and should not need­less­ly place its hard­work­ing cor­rec­tion­al staff at risk of anoth­er such mistake.

“Prison staff need to ‘man up'” Judge says

Judge Gary Lumpkin dismissed these concerns, telling officials that prison staff needed ‘to suck it up’ and ‘man up’.  Prison staff were report­ed­ly angered by Judge Lumpkin’s com­ments that they need­ed to ​“man up” and the sug­ges­tion that their con­cerns were not valid. ​“Anybody that thinks that exe­cut­ing some­body is no prob­lem has not been a part of the process,” said Justin ​“JJ” Humphrey, the state assem­bly chair of a crim­i­nal jus­tice and cor­rec­tions com­mit­tee and 20-year vet­er­an of the cor­rec­tions depart­ment. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals even­tu­al­ly grant­ed the exten­sion request in May. 

(Source: Death Penalty Information Centre – December 2024). Image: USA Today.

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