Corrections Officials Warn Arkansas Leaders About Psychological Trauma From Unprecedented Execution Schedule

As Arkansas moves toward attempting to conduct an unprecedented eight executions in eleven days, former corrections officials from across the country are warning Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson of the psychological toll the compressed execution schedule could take on prison personnel.

Dr. Allen Ault (pictured), former warden and corrections commissioner in Georgia who oversaw five executions in that state, said “[t]he rapid schedule will put an extraordinary burden on the men and women required by the state to carry out this most solemn act, and it will increase the risk of mistakes in the execution chamber — which could haunt them for the rest of their lives.”

Dr. Ault joined 22 other former corrections officers in sending a letter to Governor Hutchinson, urging him to “reconsider the pace of the planned executions to protect the professionals who will carry them out and to ensure that the procedures are legal and humane.” They caution, “[a]s former corrections officials and administrators—some of whom have directly overseen executions—we believe that performing so many executions in so little time will impose extraordinary and unnecessary stress and trauma on the staff responsible [for] carrying out the executions.”

Frank Thompson, a former warden of prisons for the Arkansas Department of Corrections and superintendent of the Oregon State Penitentiary, spoke of the mental health problems he has witnessed in prison officials who participated in executions, saying, “There is absolutely no way to conduct a well-run execution without causing at least one person to lose a little bit of their humanity, or to start at least one person on the cumulative path to post-traumatic stress. So for Arkansas to do this eight times in 10 days, to me that is unimaginable – it is compounding the stress, laying traumatic experiences on top of each other.”

Jerry Givens, who carried out 62 executions for the state of Virginia, said simply, “I just ask the governor a favor…. [J]ust have some heart for the officers that have this task that they want them to carry out. Think about their lives afterwards.”