All jobs have their downsides, but there’s one in particular that will stick with you
long after your workday is over.
Keep watching as we take a look inside the life of a death row executioner.
While regular jobs allow employees to relax at home after a hard day's work, the work
of a death row executioner is far more complicated.
Sure, the job is done as soon as the criminal is declared dead, but some executioners keep
the burden of taking the life of a person long after the deed is finished.
They are expected to execute a healthy individual and carry on with their usual activities.
According to a New York Times article, many executioners focus on their day-to-day routine
in order to cope with their task of taking lives.
Having a scheduled execution is never a good day for them, but it can be much worse, as
executioner Kenneth Dean said.
As a prison officer who also did the job of an executioner, Dean said that the worst experience
he had was when an inmate who was scheduled to be executed refused to go out of his cell.
Dean and other officers had to forcibly get the inmate out of his cell — an act they
call "cell extraction."
He said that he and other executioners he knows always question whether what they are
doing is right or wrong, telling the Times,
"Is what we do right?
But if we didn't do it, who would do it?"
"It took about 30 seconds to remove him from the cell, and maybe an additional, uh, 60
seconds to actually strap him to the gurney."
When executions are done — whether they are via lethal injection or, less commonly,
the electric chair — the act is carried out by several individuals, and the prison
warden is responsible for choosing a person for each task.
As Robert Dunham of the Death Penalty Information Center said,
"Nobody is responsible for everything."
Furthermore, being an executioner is not a career, as there is no one individual with
the sole job of taking death row inmates' lives.
Those who are involved in the execution have other jobs within the prison system and are
then called when an inmate is scheduled to be put to death.
Still, although the responsibility is spread among them, some involved in executions come
to later have a change of heart, citing the personal impact putting others to death had
on them.
Frank Thompson, the former superintendent of the Oregon State Penitentiary, eventually
came to speak out against the death penalty.
He said that he began to feel while doing his work that it was wrong, and he questioned
whether it actually makes the community safer.
"And it— capital punishment fails."
Because of the nature of the job, the identities of those who are part of the "death team"
are kept secret.
However, there are some who choose to tell their story after they have retired.
One of those is Jerry Givens, who was interviewed by The Guardian in 2013 regarding the nature
of his work.
Givens revealed that the execution team trains for the worst that could happen on execution
day in case the inmate resists.
While most executions are carried out without incident, there are instances where an inmate
can get rough with the officers.
They are also responsible for testing equipment and making sure everything goes smoothly.
Jerry Givens served as an executioner in Virginia from 1982 to 1999.
During that time, he carried out 62 executions, and it wasn't an easy job for him.
He told The Guardian,
"I had to transform myself into someone who could go and take the life of another person.
It's not an easy task to do."
In the end, he said he regrets accepting the executioner job and he became an activist
fighting against the death penalty, telling the publication,
"You can't tell me I can take the life of people and go home and be normal."
He told the Washington Post that the case of Earl Washington, a man who was sentenced
to death but eventually exonerated, influenced his perspective — If Washington had not
been pardoned, Givens would have killed an innocent man.
"If their killer was still out there, then, I took a innocent life.
I'm in the same boat, predicament this guy's in."
According to Think Progress, those involved in the execution process are likely to suffer
from post-traumatic stress disorder and experience nightmares and flashbacks.
According to statistics cited by Think Progress, 31% of prison staff involved in executions
report having symptoms.
"Those of us who have lived through an execution know just what the death penalty does to those
who must perform it."
In the last decade, several states have abolished the death penalty and replaced it with life
imprisonment without parole.
Presently, 27 states still authorize executions.
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