Dr. Allen Ault (pic­tured), a retired Georgia prison war­den, recent­ly appeared on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show, dis­cussing the effects of car­ry­ing out exe­cu­tions on prison work­ers. Dr. Ault was one of six retired prison war­dens who had urged Georgia cor­rec­tions offi­cials and Governor Nathan Deal to do what they could to halt the exe­cu­tion of Troy Davis. Davis was exe­cut­ed on September 21, 2011. Dr. Ault dis­cussed the dif­fi­cult ques­tions prison offi­cials face when par­tic­i­pat­ing in an exe­cu­tion. He said, ​“You’re killing some­body. And there‘s no deny­ing that. And espe­cial­ly when we know that sev­er­al peo­ple have been declared inno­cent with the new sci­en­tif­ic tech­niques, and we’re not real sure if the indi­vid­ual we’re exe­cut­ing this evening or next week is real­ly guilty — that in itself, that kind of doubt. The oth­er thing most of us know [is] all the research which indi­cates that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment does not deter… it seems so illog­i­cal to say to the pub­lic we do not want you to kill, and to demon­strate that, we’re going to kill indi­vid­u­als.” Dr. Ault also recount­ed his expe­ri­ence with vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers after an exe­cu­tion: ​“In every exe­cu­tion that I attend­ed, I spent time with the vic­tim’s fam­i­ly. And most of the vic­tims’ fam­i­lies that I talked with, they thought they were going to get a lot of relief or clo­sure from the exe­cu­tion. And in most cas­es, they did not.”

(The Rachel Maddow Show, September 22, 2011). See New Voices and Victims.

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