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.”

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