No room for eager executioners

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This article was published 12/07/2022 (1532 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Last March, South Carolina’s justice department announced the return of the firing squad. The supposedly painless method of lethal injections has often been anything but, and pharmaceutical companies are refusing to sell their products for use in executions.

But bullets aimed at the heart are painless and, of course, Americans will never lack guns and ammo.

The firing squad will consist of three corrections-department volunteers. Which raises several questions: who says, “Pick me” for such a task? How does it affect them? And if it does, what does it say about capital punishment itself?

To be sure, there would be some people who would eagerly sign up. Before Utah executed Gary Gilmore in 1977, the prison warden received dozens of inquiries from people wanting to sign up to shoot an unarmed, bound man. Normally, such an act would be considered first-degree murder; but call it capital punishment and it’s OK, at least for some.

Despite this, attracting would-be executioners can be difficult. In colonial-era Maryland, authorities had trouble recruiting hangmen. So they offered reprieves to condemned individuals in exchange for them hanging other prisoners, perhaps history’s most ultimate example of “kill or be killed.”

In fact, the America doesn’t have professional executioners, per se. According to Jean Mendoza on the Grunge website, “The act is carried out by several individuals, and the prison warden is responsible for choosing a person for each task.” The idea, according to Robert Dunham of the Death Penalty Information Centre, is that “Nobody is responsible for everything.” Duties are rotated, with the idea being to minimize the guilt.

If this is an acceptable form of punishment, why go to such trouble? Yet there is guilt. In her book Dead Man Walking, prominent anti-execution activist Sister Helen Prejean asked, “If you really believe in the death penalty, ask yourself if you’re willing to inject the fatal poison.”

In response, National Post columnist Barbara Kay called her bluff and wrote, “Could I kill Paul Bernardo, Clifford Olson, Saddam Hussein? Yes — o yes — I could.”

Bravado is easy on a computer keyboard, but those who’ve actually executed prisoners feel differently. Former Alabama Corrections commissioner Morris Thigpen wrote, “I have often heard individuals who have never participated in an execution say they would be more than willing to pull the switch, drop the pellet or inject the needle. On the other hand, I have never heard anyone who has participated in an execution say, ‘I would like to do that again’.”

Jim Harvey, former warden of the Broad River Correctional Institution in South Carolina, supervised 13 executions. As quoted in The State (Columbia, S.C.’s newspaper): “None of us ever enjoyed doing it. None of us wanted to do it.… Most people think that you pick volunteers for that. That’s the last thing I wanted to do. Anybody who would volunteer to kill somebody is not somebody I wanted working for me.”

So South Carolina wants volunteers, but those who do the hiring want people who are, at best, reluctant. Execution protocols include steps to make things easier — supposedly. In some states (not South Carolina), one of the shooters is given a rifle with blanks. When conducting lethal injections, three corrections officers flip a switch; only one actually releases the poison into the victim’s vein; the others are “dummies.”

The idea is that if you might not have actually killed someone you’ll feel better.

Apparently, it doesn’t work. According to Think Progress, 31 per cent of those who participate in the execution process are subject to PTSD.

Jerry Givens helped execute 62 Virginia inmates over 25 years. He now campaigns against capital punishment. As quoted on The Trauma & Mental Health Report website, he said, “You can’t tell me I can take the life of people and go home and be normal.” At the time, Givens never told his wife and children what he did.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center — in, ironically enough, South Carolina — two senior prison staff members suffered PTSD so severe they went on disability. A third died by suicide.

Conversely, there’s no indication that those who’ve escorted Paul Bernardo, Clifford Olson, Robert Picton and their ilk from courtrooms to jail cells suffered any ill effects.

Capital punishment/state-sponsored execution or whatever syllable-laden euphemism you use cannot disguise the fact it’s murder, and for most people murder is something they cannot do. When you assign executions to normal people who would rather not be there, they’re bound to experience negative effects.

Punishment shouldn’t hurt the punisher. If “this is going to hurt me more than it’s going to hurt you,” then this is inherently wrong.

Arthur Chapman is a Winnipeg freelance writer.