Hidden Casualties: Executions Harm Mental Health of Prison Staff

In March, Oklahoma offi­cials asked the state’s high court to increase the time between exe­cu­tions from 60 to 90 days, cit­ing the ​“last­ing trau­ma” and ​“psy­cho­log­i­cal toll” of exe­cu­tions on cor­rec­tions offi­cers. But Judge Gary Lumpkin dis­missed these con­cerns, telling offi­cials that prison staff need­ed to ​“suck it up” and ​“man up.” A few weeks lat­er, Brian Dorsey was exe­cut­ed in Missouri after the gov­er­nor ignored the pleas of an unprece­dent­ed 72 cor­rec­tions offi­cers to grant him clemen­cy. ​“We are part of the law enforce­ment com­mu­ni­ty who believe in law and order…But we are in agree­ment that the death penal­ty is not the appro­pri­ate pun­ish­ment for Brian Dorsey,” the offi­cers had writ­ten. Mr. Dorsey was exe­cut­ed not on death row, but 15 miles away at a dif­fer­ent prison; the state moved the exe­cu­tion cham­ber in 2005 in part because of the effect on morale for death row staff who had to exe­cute the same peo­ple they had spent years look­ing after. These exam­ples illus­trate how some cor­rec­tions staff are adverse­ly affect­ed by exe­cu­tions, fac­ing men­tal health chal­lenges that the legal sys­tem often fails to take seriously.

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. 

Some cor­rec­tions offi­cers who par­tic­i­pate in exe­cu­tions relive their trau­ma in vivid detail. A for­mer exe­cu­tion­er from Mississippi said that his job was like ​“being in a car wreck that goes on for­ev­er.” Ron McAndrew, who ran the elec­tric chair in Florida, drank a bot­tle of scotch a day after see­ing a man’s head catch fire. He said he was ​“haunt­ed by the men [he] was asked to exe­cute” and would wake up in the mid­dle of the night to find them ​“lurk­ing at the foot of [his] bed.” 

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. 

South Carolina has a par­tic­u­lar­ly acute his­to­ry of psy­cho­log­i­cal trau­ma in exe­cu­tions. A 2021 inves­ti­ga­tion found that a for­mer South Carolina exe­cu­tion­er died by sui­cide, and two exe­cu­tion team mem­bers sued the depart­ment of cor­rec­tions for vio­lat­ing their rights and inten­tion­al­ly inflict­ing emo­tion­al dis­tress by pres­sur­ing them to par­tic­i­pate in exe­cu­tions with­out men­tal health sup­port. Both men are con­sid­ered per­ma­nent­ly dis­abled due to PTSD and depres­sion from their work. One, Craig Baxley, called him­self the ​“def­i­n­i­tion of a ser­i­al killer” and said that he had con­sid­ered sui­cide because he felt that he was ​“con­demned by God.”

After resum­ing exe­cu­tions this year for the first time since 2011, South Carolina exe­cut­ed Richard Moore on November 1 over the objec­tions of for­mer cor­rec­tions direc­tor Jon Ozmint, who wrote that Mr. Moore had lived an ​“exem­plary life” and served as a ​“pow­er­ful force for good” in the prison sys­tem. A few weeks lat­er, the state supreme court announced that it would delay issu­ing exe­cu­tion war­rants until January in order to have a break for the hol­i­day sea­son. The rul­ing fol­lowed a defense motion that argued that ​“con­sec­u­tive exe­cu­tions with vir­tu­al­ly no respite will take a sub­stan­tial toll on all involved, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing a time of year that is so impor­tant to families.”

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. ​“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.” 

In this con­text, uni­fied efforts by cor­rec­tions staff to address the psy­cho­log­i­cal effects of exe­cu­tions rep­re­sent a mile­stone. The Oklahoma effort orig­i­nat­ed with a group of nine for­mer Oklahoma cor­rec­tions offi­cials, who wrote a let­ter to Attorney General Gentner Drummond ask­ing for extend­ed time based on the detri­men­tal impact of the job and the lack of men­tal health sup­port. They not­ed that exe­cu­tion team mem­bers expe­ri­ence an increased risk of PTSD, sui­cide, and sub­stance abuse, and the gru­el­ing prepa­ra­tion sched­ule put 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 defense men­tal health experts vis­it­ing the prison ​“about the dis­tress they are expe­ri­enc­ing due to the nonstop executions.” 

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. 

While acknowl­edg­ing the sim­i­lar­i­ties between con­duct­ing an exe­cu­tion and killing on the bat­tle­field, for­mer cor­rec­tions direc­tor and mil­i­tary vet­er­an Allen L. Ault argued that ​“there was one major dif­fer­ence”: in war, the ​“ene­my was an anony­mous, armed com­bat­ant who was threat­en­ing my life.” By con­trast, ​“the con­demned pris­on­er is a known human being who is total­ly defense­less when brought into the death cham­ber.” He wrote that cor­rec­tion­al staff wit­ness the ​“changed mind-sets and pro­found remorse” of death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers over many years, and ​“the dam­age [of an exe­cu­tion] spills over into the larg­er prison community.” 

Former Missouri cor­rec­tions offi­cer Tim Lancaster, a 27-year vet­er­an of the depart­ment, expressed sim­i­lar feel­ings in describ­ing his dis­be­lief and sad­ness about Mr. Dorsey’s exe­cu­tion. As the prison bar­ber, Mr. Dorsey was con­sid­ered ​“one of the most trust­ed in the insti­tu­tion” and a ​“mod­el” for oth­er pris­on­ers. ​“You’re work­ing with a pris­on­er for 10 years, you’ve inter­act­ed with them every sin­gle day, and you can feel they’ve changed,” Mr. Lancaster said. ​“They’ve real­ly reha­bil­i­tat­ed, and that’s the department’s goal — to reha­bil­i­tate offend­ers. All of a sud­den they flip the switch, and now it’s like: ​‘OK, we’re going ahead and killing them. There has to be an under­ly­ing effect from that, with­out a doubt.”