Randy Workman (pictured) is a former warden of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, where he oversaw 32 executions. In a recent interview, he was critical of many aspects of capital punishment. He said the death penalty failed the victims’ families and wasted money: “We spend millions of dollars on these cases and going through the process and the end result is the family, do they feel vindicated? I’d say 90% of the time the people I’ve seen don’t.” He shared the advice he gave to a murder victim’s mother (a relative) who asked for his thoughts on whether to seek the death penalty: “I said here’s the deal, if you get the death penalty and you[’re] successful, you’re going to spend the next eight to 12 years back and forth in court and you’re going to relive your son’s death, because he has all these appeals….I’ve seen some mothers that had some serious broken hearts that said this doesn’t end it for me.This isn’t justice to me. This doesn’t do it.” He also said the threat of execution does not deter people from committing murder: “I can tell you the people that I’ve executed, when they committed crimes, they didn’t, wasn’t thinking about the death penalty and a lot of them were high, or a lot of them in the generation of people we’re dealing with today don’t have a lot of forethought about the end result.” Workman said he still supported the death penalty, but would not want to “push the button” on the chance the defendant might be innocent: “I would never take that chance with my life,” he said.

(K. Fretland, “Oklahoma former prison warden: death penalty does not help families,” Guardian, April 28, 2014). See New Voices and Victims.

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