Abstract
A trauma framework is applied to the experiences of execution team members. A directed content analysis of three seminal publications is used to investigate how execution team members respond to observing and participating in executions, a potentially traumatic stressor. Through these texts, supplemented by other research, the study finds that the execution process, meant to facilitate executions and insulate execution team officers from stress, only partially achieves these goals. The findings suggest that many of the concepts central to understanding executioners at work—how they understand and cope with their roles—are dynamic rather than static and vary in degree across persons and situations. Execution team officers report varying degrees of difficulty fully rationalizing and diffusing responsibility for their actions, ultimately leading to internal conflict and stress about the death penalty and participation in executions.
Introduction
As of January 16, 2020, there are 2,656 individuals on death row in the United States (Death Penalty Information Center, 2020). Each of these condemned inmates is overseen by death row correctional officers, and upon time for execution, is executed by an execution team composed of correctional officers and overseen by a prison warden. The literature is limited on how those close to executions, such as chaplains, execution teams, and wardens function, as it is difficult to obtain access to these populations for study (Gillespie, 2003; Johnson, 1998; Trombley, 1992). While studies have asked death row correctional officers—distinct from those who carry out the execution—about the functions of their job and mental health (Brown, 2008; Osofsky et al., 2005; Osofsky & Osofsky, 2002), there is only one ethnography to date on how execution teams actually operate (Johnson, 1998).We ask: How do execution team members cope with their job requirement of taking a life and how, to a lesser extent, do others close to the death penalty understand and cope with their involvement in the execution process?
Prior research has focused on how executioners may be psychologically harmed by participating in a life-taking process (Gil et al., 2006; Johnson, 2016; Seemungal et al., 2016). Other research attends to how traumatic stress for perpetrators of violence generally is manifested at varying degrees of intensity, encompassing clinical, and subclinical levels of stress reactions (Grossman, 1996; MacNair, 2002, 2015). In this analysis, we treat stress and trauma along a continuum (see Figley, 1995), which we contend is most pertinent to the study of execution teams and those close to executions. That continuum includes anticipation-induced stress, perpetration-induced stress, and post-traumatic stress, all potentially relevant to understanding the experiences of those involved in executions.
Literature Review
Trauma and Perpetration of Violence
Several scholars have pointed to the importance of understanding trauma at both clinical and subclinical levels for persons engaged in or exposed to violent activity (Drescher et al., 2011; MacNair, 2002, 2015). Understanding trauma in this way challenges the distinct criteria used to define traumatic stress found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-V) and instead examines trauma as a process existing along a continuum. The fifth edition of the DSM-V classifies criteria for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) into three categories: the stressor, symptomatology, and duration. Notably, in the most recent edition, the DSM-V explicitly expanded the traumatic stressors to include the experiences of perpetrators (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Using the military as a frame of reference, the DSM-V states: “For military personnel, being a perpetrator, witnessing atrocities, or killing the enemy” are defined as distinct trauma stressors. 1
Despite this recent addition, most of the literature on PTSD focuses on traumas suffered by victims rather than perpetrators. Perpetration-induced trauma, however, may have unique potential for moral injury—to damage the person’s sense of being right with the world as a respectable moral being—because it stems from the intentional actions of the person responsible for the violence in question (MacNair, 2002, 2015). The limited research conducted to date on perpetrators of violence and associated trauma has focused in large measure on the military, beginning with studying how trauma manifests among combat soldiers (Grossman, 1996). Notably, Grossman finds that physical and social distance from the victim affects the later development of trauma symptomatology—the further from the victim, the less likely trauma will manifest. Later scholarship extended this beyond soldiers. For example, Pitts et al. (2013) found that killing in self-defense was the most significant predictor for PTSD symptoms in army medics.
There have been few studies on how trauma and stress affect prison officers, who work in a setting where violence and the threat of violence are common and, in some cases, endemic (Johnson et al., 2017). One study of stress and trauma among correctional officers comes from Desert Waters Correctional Outreach, a Colorado-based non-profit that works to support correctional officers. This non-profit conducted a nationwide survey of corrections professionals and found that 27% had experienced PTSD symptoms within the last month (Spinaris et al., 2012). Another study found that witnessing an execution often led journalists to experience symptoms of dissociation and anxiety (Freinkel et al., 1994). They found that 60% agreed with the statement that during the execution, “I felt estranged or detached from other people” and 53% agreed with the statement, “I felt distant from my own emotions.” These studies suggest the utility of applying a secondary trauma framework for understanding the experiences of execution teams, death row correctional officers, and others who come into close contact with executions.
Unlike PTSD and PITS which come into play when victims are directly affected by the potentially trauma-inducing event, trauma can also occur when the individuals are not directly affected by the potentially traumatic activity. For example, instead of experiencing a sexual assault, someone may experience secondary trauma upon hearing of another’s firsthand account of their assault experience. The symptomatology of secondary trauma is often similar to PTSD, but the symptoms are typically less acute (De Lilly, 2014). This phenomenon was first applied to caregivers and therapists (Figley, 1995, p. 7). Secondary trauma, sometimes called vicarious trauma, has since been applied to populations that interact with trauma survivors such as nurses (Beck, 2011) and journalists reporting on disasters (McMahon, 2001).
In their literature reviews, Gil et al. (2006) and Seemungal et al. (2016) theorized that secondary trauma affects execution teams. In the execution context, Gil et al. (2006) literature review defined secondary trauma as “the distress, harm, and injuries that are visited upon those other than the condemned” (p. 27). The experience of secondary trauma does not have to qualify as a disorder; rather, in taking this approach, one looks at the cumulative effects of indirectly experiencing recurring potentially traumatizing events, such as observing executions at close range or being exposed to death house banter about the horrors, real, and embellished, of capital crimes. Note, however, that execution team officers do not only observe executions but are direct agents of violence who oversee executions, escort prisoners during their last walks, participate in the strapping down of the prisoner to the execution apparatus, and manage the immediate disposition of the body, which must be removed from the execution apparatus and transported to a morgue for further process. Using a trauma framework that encompasses a continuum of stress, from both observing and inflicting violence, we can conceptualize more fully the traumatic stressors on execution teams and those who are close to the execution.
Sanctioning of Violence
Executions are unique in that they are state-sanctioned and legally authorized violence, leading to the perception that the condemned prisoner’s death is an appropriate punishment, and even a “justified and even laudable activity” (Johnson, 1986, p. 181; see generally, Fiske & Rai, 2015) that is deserved. There are two realms where the deservingness of punishment is applied: first, at the crime the condemned committed and, second, at the risk the condemned poses to correctional officers while under sentence of death (see generally, Johnson, 1998, 2016). In executions, the state has sanctioned the death of the condemned because of their crime, a formalized and elaborate statement of deservingness. At each stage of appeals, this deservingness becomes more articulated and engrained in repeated confirmations of the appropriateness of the death sentence.
Two studies have investigated perceptions of deservingness in the execution context. In the first study, Osofsky and Osofsky (2002) explicitly address how execution teams stress the need for security on death row and the enormity of the crimes committed by condemned prisoners. When execution team members discussed their support for the death penalty, they cited the crimes the men committed. Osofsky et al. (2005) corroborated these findings. They conducted semi-structured interviews with execution teams, the support teams, and prison guards in three Southern states. Of the three groups of prison personnel, they found that the execution team members were most likely to focus on justifying the execution through discussing the crimes of the condemned prisoners, thereby helping to diffusing their responsibility in the execution process.
Method
We conducted a directed content analysis guided by the theoretical work on trauma (including secondary trauma) and perceived deservingness. This theoretical work, described above, shaped our coding categories and the discussion of our findings (Hseih & Shannon, 2005). This method allows us to investigate how execution team members, as well as those close to executions but not directly involved, understand, and react to executions.
Three books were subjected to directed content analysis: Death Work, an ethnography of an execution team at work over the course of three executions; Death at Midnight, a former Florida warden’s memoir covering the execution process as it affected several condemned individuals and two in intimate detail; and The Execution Protocol, which follows the development of the Missouri Protocol for using lethal injection. The reasoning for why each of these texts was chosen follows:
Death Work, by Johnson (1998), is the only ethnography of an execution team at work. The research was conducted in a Southern prison over 3 years. Johnson interviewed death row inmates, death row officers, execution team officers, and others (e.g., chaplains). Gillespie’s (2003) Inside the Death Chamber was also considered, but it offered unsystematic field observations and is, in our view, more a call to abolish the death penalty than an analysis of how executioners and those close to executions understand their jobs.
The second text, Cabana’s (1996) memoir, Death at Midnight, follows Cabana’s experience as a warden overseeing executions and his psychological experience during and after these events. We used Death After Midnight for its ample discussion of the execution protocols and his first-hand observations about coping over time with the psychological stress of participating in executions. While Robert Elliot also published a memoir about his time as New York’s state executioner in Agent of Death, we wanted to use a more recent account—Elliot’s memoir was published in 1940.
The third text, The Execution Protocol, by Trombley (1992) features interviews with various prison personnel and those who have shaped the death penalty today. We chose this text for its attention to the interplay between the institution’s rules and regulations and the experiences of staff implementing the execution protocol. The book came from information collected for a documentary by the same name, released the following year. While there have been other books on execution teams, such as Von Drehle’s (1995) Among the Lowest of the Dead and Lifton and Mitchell’s (2000) Who Owns Death?, they were omitted from analysis as they were summaries of other studies, not original work.
Our goal is to understand both how individuals experience the potential traumatic stressor and how they cope with it. To respond to the first goal—the experience of the potential traumatic stressor—we identified two initial coding categories drawn from the literature on trauma: initial response and chronic reactions. We operationalized these two initial coding categories into the symptoms identified in the literature on trauma and PTSD as common to those who have experienced a potentially traumatic stressor: physiological activity, peritraumatic dissociation, and numbness. We operationalized chronic reactions as any initial reaction that lasted beyond the execution itself. To address our second goal, coping with the potential traumatic stressor, we identified the initial coding categories, again drawn from the literature on trauma, as perceived deservingness and authority. We operationalized perceived deservingness as emphasis on retribution, and authority as emphasis on professionalism and teamwork. In conversations with Author 2, Author 1 also left open a coding category of other emotional reactions and coping strategies to increase the trustworthiness of our results and reduce bias in our analysis.
To conduct this content analysis, Author 1 first highlighted all text that appeared to fall into these initial coding categories, coding all these highlighted passages into the operationalized coding categories and retyping each quote into a separate document under the coding category theme. This methodology is further described in Hseih and Shannon’s (2005) overview of approaches to content analysis. When analyzing the text, Author 1 conducted both a manifest and latent content analysis, identifying ready themes in the text, as well as the importance of language and the underlying meanings of the words (Graneheim & Lundman, 2003). For example, Author 1coded both for the literal message of the language (e.g., if individuals were talking about their role in the execution) but also the underlying meaning (e.g., if they used the passive voice, presumably to distance themselves from a specific act). All categorizations were reviewed and affirmed by Author 2.
We do not seek to retroactively diagnose any of the individuals who are quoted. Instead, we look for patterns which can shed light on the trauma experienced by execution teams and the ways officers cope with traumatic stressors. By presenting in their own words the manner in which execution teams conceptualize their work, we explore the value of trauma and conceptualize trauma responses on a continuum of experience. While the formats of the three texts are distinct (i.e., an ethnography and a memoir), the differences provide a robustness to the study as we find similar themes throughout the texts.
Results
Understanding the Execution Process Through a Trauma Framework
Physiological activity
Physiological activity in this area of research includes a racing heart, chills, or sweating. These physiological activities can happen during the traumatic stressor as well as later, if someone re-experiences the event during a dream, flashback, or other stressful situation.
Donald Cabana served as the warden at Parchman Mississippi State Penitentiary, where he oversaw executions. He begins his book by discussing the execution of a man, Connie Ray Evans, to whom he dedicates his book. When the day came for Evans’s execution, Cabana (1996) writes that he was “overcome by a wave of nausea” (p. 4) and that “a chill suddenly trickled down my spine” (p. 3). While Evans was sitting in the gas chamber and Cabana was waiting for the state attorney to give the approval the execution’s order, Cabana remembers, “My head was reeling from the commotion around me, and my heart pounded with such fury that I knew everyone in the room could hear it” (p. 13). In this recollection of the event, Cabana experienced a racing heart, nausea, and a chill, all physiological reactions to a traumatic event.
Trombley’s (1992) book, The Execution Protocol, similarly discusses how participation in the execution led to a physiological arousal. When Trombley asked the prison’s chaplain, Gary Tune, to talk about his reactions when overseeing executions in Missouri, Tune responded that executions were “exhausting.” Elaborating, he observed: “You’re running on adrenaline. You’re stressed out. And when it’s all said and done, because you’re running on the adrenaline of stress, it’s anticlimactic. . . . there’s nothing there. You keep thinking there’s going to be some emotion. You’re searching for something. How do I feel? It’s just a blank” (p. 275). Unlike Warden Cabana, Chaplain Tune did not experience nausea or a chill, but rather the feeling of an adrenaline rush and stress in the moment, followed by a lack of sensation or numbness.
For the men interviewed by Johnson (1998) for Death Work, fear of embarrassment or not being professional and proper (i.e., not conducting the execution “according to the book”) led to tension and stress during the execution. As one man says, “You’re tense because you don’t want to make a mistake, because you’ve got twelve witnesses watching you do that thing. All right, say you drop the headgear. . . . It would be a very embarrassing thing with people watching you and this man sitting here waiting to die. (Laughs nervously). And you drop the thing and—it’s a lot of tension” (162). The stress of making a mistake during the execution led to a state of arousal for this member of the execution team. Similarly, the warden also experienced a state of arousal because of the stress of failure, especially a failure leading to a botched execution. After overseeing an execution the night before, the warden said, “I didn’t sleep well that night. I didn’t sleep well the night before either. . . . When I think about this, it washes over you, it comes in a jumbled up mess of things: The job’s over, it’s been accomplished, nothing went wrong” (179). But still, the warden makes clear, a “jumbled up mess” of emotions linger on. Like the men on the execution team, the warden was fearful of a poorly conducted execution, and especially a botched execution, because he would be the one held responsible. His physiological arousal preceded the day of the execution and extended beyond the actual execution and on into the night of the execution. Literature suggests that sleeplessness is a symptom of acute stress and is a response to a traumatic stressor (Bryant & Harvey, 1997).
Peritraumatic dissociation
The extent to which someone experienced peritraumatic dissociation during the traumatic stressor is a strong predictor of the later development and symptomatology of PTSD (Nöthling et al., 2015). The diagnostic criteria for dissociation are ambiguous; the literature connecting acute stress, PTSD, and dissociation does not specify the onset or the time of the experience of dissociation (Bryant & Harvey, 1997). Regardless, dissociation, manifested as feelings of having out-of-body experiences or feeling like one has lost touch with reality, are indications of traumatic stressors. Cabana (1996, p. 3) writes that during the execution of Evans: “For an instant I felt invisible, lost in the privacy of anguished, confused thoughts, but the sounds of impending death abruptly jarred me back to reality.” He experienced derealization—a feeling of distorted reality—in which he psychologically left the current scene. Of all those interviewed in the three texts, Cabana was the only one to speak directly about experiencing dissociation during or after an execution.
Numbness
In Johnson’s (1998) ethnography, two execution team members spoke about the numbness they experienced. One said, “I just cannot feel anything. And that was what bothered me. I thought that I would feel something, but I didn’t feel anything” (p. 181). This interviewee was able to conceptualize his experience of numbness through comparing how he expected to feel to his actual feelings, highlighting the importance of expectations one holds during an execution. Another interviewee shares a similar sentiment: “You just, you just, you just watch the whole thing. There’s nothing really (pause) going through your mind” (p. 178). The apathy, which also hints at dissociation, is nonetheless an emotional experience—for this individual, participating in the execution was physical in that he was in touch with his body watching the “whole thing” yet his mind felt detached. In contrast, another member of the execution team said after he participates in an execution, “I go home and eat a hearty meal. I just block it out, that’s it. It all blocks out until the next time” (p. 181). For the two interviewees who report experiencing numbness, the numbness extended beyond the immediate reaction to the execution. All three interviewees use an avoidance strategy, common for those dealing with traumatic loss (Schneider et al., 2007).
In Cabana’s (1996, p. 10) recollection of Evans’s execution, he writes, “I stood by silently, with the chaplain and Dwight Presley [a member of the prison personnel] flanking me, as the officers secured Connie in the chair. I felt numbed, and for a second or two, the officers appeared much the same.” The quote begins with an assessment of his body in relation to others, showing that he is aware of his physical body; however, as he is psychologically numbing his emotional response, he is dulling the connection between his mind and body, and likely extending those perceptions to the members of the execution team.
Different execution methods were in play during the executions reported in each book: electrocution for Johnson, gas chamber for Cabana, and lethal injection for Trombley. Lethal injection, with its connotation of being a clean, medical death, seems to have affected how those in execution teams understood their work (Trombley, 1992). Prison chaplain Gary Tune said, “Because it is so sanitary, it just seems completely remote” (Trombley, 1992, p. 277). Here, the interplay between the execution protocol and its connotations of sterility affect the individual reactions, producing or at least reinforcing feelings of remoteness, an indicator of dissociation. As the physical death and imagery of lethal injection is more sterile and cleaner, Tune suggests, it increases the distance between the viewer and the execution.
Chronic reactions to executions
Chronic reactions to traumatic stress include intrusive thoughts, recurring dreams, and re-experiencing the event. None of the men in any of the sources reported experiencing recurrent dreams or re-experiencing of the event; however, one of the men interviewed by Johnson (1998, p. 180) said he had a recurring fear of being attacked by an inmate and Cabana (1996) states repeatedly that he is unable to forget his first execution. These two examples show the duration of psychological stress, but that they are outliers. Edward Earl Johnson’s execution in 1987 was the first execution Cabana oversaw. Cabana (1996, p. 67) writes the following: The planning and meticulous attention to detail paid off, however, and Edward Johnson’s execution came off flawlessly. There was just one problem. Afterward, I felt dirty. I remember standing in the shower a three o’clock in the morning, scrubbing as hard as I could. No matter what I tried, nothing seemed to put my mind at ease. The rest of the world could afford to be matter-of-fact, I thought; they had not strapped a man in a chair and killed him. I would remember every detail about Edward Earl Johnson—every wrinkle, every blemish—forever.
Being able to remember “every wrinkle, every blemish—forever” is a recurring and intrusive thought. Cabana experiences the merging of the psychological and physical, the antithesis of dissociation, which later pervades Cabana’s thoughts.
One man interviewed by Johnson (1998, p. 182) said that while he had not experienced recurring dreams and images or intrusive thoughts, his emotional regulation had changed. He said, “Very seldom do I get upset or get upset to a point where I would feel my voice rise. I just shut everything down.” Apathy, or the inability to show or experience emotion, is a sign of chronic stress. While the man is not discussing his inability to show emotion, he does discuss how he “shut[s] everything down,” and seldom experiences high emotions.
Coping with the Traumatic Stressor
Diffusion of responsibility
Johnson (1998) writes the institutional protocol adopted and rehearsed by the execution team explicitly diffuses responsibility among the members. This diffusion literally extends to the limb with which the execution team member is charged. One member said, “My assignment is the leg piece. Right leg. I roll his pants’ leg up, place a piece on his leg, strap his leg in” (p. 132). In contrast, another said, “I strap the left side. I strap his arms and another man straps his legs and another one puts his head in the cap” (p. 133). By deliberately diffusing the responsibility of the execution of the execution team members to separately assigned body parts, not only is each and every execution team member psychologically responsible for only a part of the execution, but there is also less chance for confusion or mistakes. This diffusion precludes any one person from carrying the full responsibility of the execution. As one interviewee said, “We all take a part of the killing, the execution. So, this guy that pulled the switch shouldn’t have more responsibility than the guy that cut his hair or the guy that fed him or the guy that watched him. We all take a part in it; we all play 100 percent in it too. That take[s] the load off this one individual [who pulls the switch]” (127). Not only does each member of the team share a reduced and equal proportion of the responsibility of the execution, they actively describe and classify it as a team performance.
Trombley (1992, p. 223) quotes Betty Weber, the prison psychologist, and how she defines and understands her role in executions. In response to a question on how she felt working in the death house, she said, “I did not make the decision to execute the inmate. I have nothing to do with that. I am there to provide what comfort is possible, and support.” Similar to others, she distances herself from the decision to execute. She also identifies her role in the death house—providing support and comfort—as separate from the actual execution. Trombley also interviews Fred Leuchter, the supplier of electric chairs to death houses in the early 1980s and a controversial figure. Leuchter emphasizes how he has helped executions become more “proper” and that his psychological detachment from the execution itself stems from the fact that he is not the one determining the sentence. “It’s not up to me,” he states explicitly, clearly separating himself from the executions for which he makes and readies the implements of death (p. 23).
Those who participate in executions, like Cabana, point to junctures in the justice process where others determined guilt, the sentence, and the date of execution. When confronted with a man on death row who proclaimed his innocence to his dying breath, Cabana (1996, p. 160) writes, “Surely, if there were even the slightest hint that he had not committed the crime, the federal district court or the U.S. Fifth District Court of Appeals would have intervened long ago.” The literature on exonerations belies Cabana’s confidence (Sarat, 2014), but more to the point here, the fragmented nature of the capital punishment system diffuses responsibility across so many decision-points and decision-makers that doubts in the accumulated wisdom of the system are hard to sustain at the end, in the death house. In his memoir, Cabana never believed in the man’s innocence, showing the long reach of diffused responsibility.
Emphasis on professionalism and teamwork
The three texts defined professionalism among members as a calculated relationship between the execution team itself and the correctional institution. Mark Schreiber, Deputy Warden of Operations at Missouri State Penitentiary and coauthor of the Missouri Protocol, said, “We all work together. It’s a collective thing. Everyone is properly trained. They know what they’re supposed to do, and take care of business” (Trombley, 1992, p. 119). The protocol not only makes the execution a deliberate, collective, and professional experience, but also turns it into “business.” His word choice shows how the professionalism of the execution has affected perceptions of the actual event, depersonalizing the execution through the business-like procedure. Speaking to this protocol, Don Roper, a member of the Missouri execution team, said “We do everything, step by step. Lock, stock, and barrel. If it’s an ito be dotted, we dot the i” (208). Roper shows how the protocol is internalized and executed by its members.
Professionalism for the men Johnson (1998) interviewed means conducting an execution by the book and without emotions or feelings. An unnamed prison administrator emphasizes how the team has to carry out the executions and therefore, do it with dignity and professionalism. He said, “It was something, of course, that had to be done. We had to be sure that we did it properly, professionally, and [that] we gave as much dignity to the person as we possibly could in the process” (128). Professionalism means offering and ensuring the condemned dies with dignity, but also that the execution team remains dignified in their work through carrying out the execution properly. In this quote, the prison administrator engages with the condemned and ensures that his rights are not infringed upon. One member of the execution team agrees. He said, “I’ve seen it. I know what it is. I’ve smelled it. I’ve tasted it. I’ve felt it . . . So I look at it like this: If it’s gotta be done, at least it can be done in a humane way. . . . Everything is done by documentation. On time. By the book” (130–131). Interestingly, both emphasize dignity and humanity within the constraints of carrying out the execution: a smooth, flawless execution is dignified for all concerned, who dedicate themselves to doing well what must be done. In effect, both persons diffuse the responsibility through their professionalism—it is something that “had to be done” and “gotta be done.”
The team, Johnson writes, also functions to counsel and stabilize its members. Working as a cohesive team mitigates any feelings that could potentially affect the execution procedure. One member said, “There’s more closeness than in any other group I’ve seen in the system, as far as working together. And one thing we do—we got this thing with the team—we talk to each other” (p. 135). Another team member agrees that the team emphasizes communication. He said, “We are very, very close knit. . . . One guy may say, ‘I don’t think I can make it tonight.’ And we’ll sit down and say, ‘C’mon, what’s the problem? Let’s talk it out’” (p. 135). By creating an environment for communication among the team members, which excludes the condemned prisoner completely, they create a place for coping and processing emotions that stem from participating in executions.
Cabana (1996) writes that professionalism looks like rationalizing executions as a task he has to perform. He writes, “Even though I was not looking forward to the task, I would merely be doing my job. I had no way of knowing then how many times I would hear the phrase ‘just doing your job’ later on in my career. The day was to come when it would ring in my ears until I wanted to scream” (p. 125). With emphasis on the professional aspect of executions—that “the task” is just part of his “job”—Cabana shows how he understood his job. However, as he later challenged his participation in executions as “just doing [his] job.” His diffusion of personal responsibility to his profession’s requirements ultimately broke down after he left the support system of the protocol and execution team. He went on to become an anti-death penalty activist.
Perceived deservingness
In each of the three texts, the men serving on the execution team and other prison personnel emphasized the deservingness of the condemned to receive the death penalty. Perceived deservingness is reinforced at every stage of sentencing process: at trial, when the condemned is found guilty; at sentencing (a separate hearing) when a death sentence is chosen over a life sentence; on death rows as the sentence is affirmed on appeal after appeal; and finally in the death house, when the execution proceeds without a last minute appeal or communication by the governor. At each of these stages, the condemned may have challenged his sentence and at each stage the state determined that capital punishment is a just and proportionate punishment. In this fashion, the state repeatedly affirms that the condemned prisoner is deserving of the ultimately sanction, execution.
A process of justification, hinging in considerable measure on deservedness, also occurs within the execution team: Johnson (1998, p. 159) writes that before the execution, the execution team have a “psyching up” ritual, where they make jokes to each other and go over the day’s schedule and protocol. One member of the execution team said his ritual is rereading about the condemned prisoner’s crimes. He said, “I mean, a human being is a human being. But you, the way you get around getting to like ‘em, you read the papers and things, and you brush up on the case and just see that this man has done, you know. . . . So you say, ‘Well, okay, it’s okay. It’s all right, all right to put him to death” (147). Here we see how the process of dehumanization unfold—the condemned begins as “a human being” but then, after reading about and “brush[ing] up” on the typically gory details of his crime, he becomes a brutal criminal who is fully deserving of his punishment.
Trombley (1992) writes of a similar justification process the Missouri execution team uses. Don Roper, an operations officer, who takes care of the “nuts and bolts” (p. 204) of executions, told Trombley, “It doesn’t bother me. Sure, I take it for what it is. And I know where I’m at. And as a professional in the Department of Corrections, I know my duty. These people killed somebody. I didn’t. All I’m doing is a job that the state says I should do” (p. 205). While he may not have killed a member of free society, he does participate in the killing of the condemned. He distinguishes himself from the condemned through the legal and social sanctioning of the execution. In this quote, he blends a diffusion of responsibility from himself to the state and the condemned prisoner’s deservedness: he as an official is “doing a job that the state says” he should perform with professionalism, as it is his “duty” to mete out justice to those who patently deserve it.
In his memoir, Cabana (1996) writes of the legacy of Jimmy Lee Gray’s botched execution. Gray had a violent seizure in the gas chamber; his choking and frenzied efforts to escape the chairand break free horrified the witnesses, who had to be escorted from the room before the execution was finished. When discussing this botched execution, Cabana writes, “Nothing was used to immobilize the convicted child killer’s head” (p. 7). The execution was botched because of a flaw in the protocol—that Gray’s head was not strapped down and thus he had a what was perceived to be (and almost certainly was) a violent and painful death. In later executions, a head strap was built in. However, as Cabana is quick to point out—Gray was a “convicted child killer,” a category much reviled in the free world, let alone in the prison, where child killers and others typically relegated to protective custody are at the bottom of a social hierarchy and subject to brutal abuses (Johnson et al., 2017; O’Donnell & Edgar, 2010). Replacing Gray’s name with “convicted child killer” places his crime over his person; for prison personnel on death row, the crime and the man cannot be separated.
Cabana writes how he challenged this perceived deservingness in one instance, causing himself distress. He walked along the row of death row cells, “Approaching [Evans’s] cell to tell him of his date with the executioner, I wondered what set Evans apart from the three men I had just passed. What made him more deserving of death than them?” (p. 69). When confronted with the comparison of one condemned prisoner’s crimes to others around him, the perceived deservingness of capital punishment as an overarching justification for execution was threatened, weakening Cabana’s resolve to work in the death penalty.
Discussion
This study contributes to the literature on capital punishment and the psychology of coping in three ways. First, it applies secondary trauma as a theoretical framework to categorize execution team members’ experiences. Second, it is the only study to explicitly test how well this framework applies to execution teams. Third, this study investigates the coping strategies used by execution team members to manage the responsibilities of their job. It is worth noting that, despite the different modes of execution—the electric chair, lethal injection, and gas chamber, respectively—all themes examined in this study are present in each text, adding robustness to our work. This investigation also allows us to draw some conclusions about secondary trauma among those whose jobs place them close to executions but do not involve them directly in the execution process.
Focusing directly on executioners at work, we note that the execution process, embodied in a protocol and a set of allied social processes, is upheld by the authority of the state as the source of authority for executions. That authority is embodied in law, reinforced through an elaborate appeals process, and articulated in an execution protocol that guides the execution process. This protocol, in turn, shapes how members of the execution team understand their role in the execution process and come to carry out executions as matters of professional routine.
Despite an execution process that enshrines a formula for smooth and impersonal executions, the actual killing can bring varying degrees of stress and trauma in its wake. This stress manifests itself in the face of factors designed to reduce stress: a disciplined routine, a diffusion of responsibility, a mandate for professionalism which entails the suppression of feelings in service of efficiency, and the embrace of teamwork that offers a valued shared identity and a sense of worth. These factors, singly but especially in concert, affirm the appropriateness of executing a condemned prisoner. It is significant, then, that reports of acute and chronic stress are found in each of the texts analyzed. If the defenses offered by the execution process worked perfectly, there would be minimal stress and trauma in the carrying out of executions.
Our findings suggest that many of the concepts central to understanding executioners at work—how they understand and cope with their roles—are dynamic rather than static, varying in degree across persons and situations rather than being present or absent across all persons and situations. These variations are complicated by the general tendency of correctional officers to under-report stress and by the limits of questionnaires administered long after the events under study. 2 The evidence examined in this study suggests the inability of officers and others to fully rationalize and diffuse responsibility for their actions, ultimately leading to internal conflict and stress about the death penalty and participation in executions.
The findings reported here are consistent with research reported by Osofsky et al. (2005). Once the defenses offered by the execution process weaken or fail, doubts about the justice or usefulness of the death penalty can take root. This is seen in the intrusive images reported well after executions have been done and in nagging doubts, long after retirement, about the accuracy of the legal system in sorting out the innocent from the guilty, raising the prospect of one’s having participated in the execution of an innocent man.
To be sure, our study is limited on several fronts. First, the texts do not cover executions after 1997. Nevertheless, we are aware of no evidence to suggest that there have been changes in execution protocols or in staff selection or training since the executions reviewed in this study. Changes that have occurred are likely to reinforce and extend our findings about the stress and trauma engendered by executions rather than to undermine them. For example, executions are less frequent today than during the period covered by the books under study; as more rare events, executions may well be more stressful for officers because they are less readily seen as matters of routine that are uncritically accepted by the larger society. Another limitation is that each of the books we reviewed can be seen as a case study; case studies limit generalizability even as they add to the authenticity of the information at hand.
We have examined how elements of the execution process reduce but do not eliminate stress and trauma among execution team members. As the warden in Johnson’s (1998, pp. 179–180) ethnography said, “It affects them, even if they don’t let on, but they handle it. They’re a strong bunch of men. . . . They’re not gonna be hurt; it’s not gonna leave any scars.” The accuracy of this statement hinges on the meaning of the term hurt and the willingness of officers to acknowledge injury. One now retired officer, Jerry Givens, reflecting on his many nights in the execution chamber, revealed the complexity of the matter at hand when he observed: “I wouldn’t say that I have anyone that haunts my memories” but “I have executions that probably will be with me until the day I decide to close my eyes [and] the Lord decide to take me away” (Interview excerpts from the development of a documentary, Stogner & Stack, 2018). No condemned prisoner is unforgettable, perhaps due to the power of dehumanizing forces seemingly baked into the execution process, but some executions are memorable, and indeed live on as seemingly permanent features of this executioner’s mental life. We can point to how this officer, among others, employed various coping mechanisms in defense of self as executions unfolded, but also question whether he or any execution team members can truly say there have been no scars left behind by the killing process.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
