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.
