Can administering the death penalty cause harm to directly or indirectly to participants in it?

[CreekDog]

I mean to those who administer it or are involved with it.

Whether it be by lethal injection, firing squad, electrocution, etc.

If a person later has PTSD and it can be partially or wholly attributable to these actions, should the state or government, treat it as a work related, or job related illness and provide compensation and treatment in response?

[JJChambers]

1. Of course

If so done is diagnosed with an injury, physical or mental, resulting from their job, that person is entitled to compensation.

[Kelvin Mace]

2. Especially when you find out

the person you murdered was probably innocent.

[CreekDog]

3. i think if it's an innocent person, then murder is the proper term

[TheMathieu]

4. Sociopaths are drawn to that line of work.

But any real humans in those positions probably struggle with a lot of darkness.

[Warpy]

28. Dunno, I knew a death row guard who was humane

It wore him down because he said once they were on death row, isolated and away from the general population and away from booze and drugs, most of them turned into OK guys. He thought the monsters they became on various substances should have been on death row, not the guys they left behind.

This state abolished the DP some years ago, although we still have a few men sitting on death row who were given that penalty before it was abolished. I know the cases and neither man should ever see the prison from outside it. I hope they get commuted to life without parole.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

5. Hopefully, to their consciences. Assuming they may have one.

[FarCenter]

6. You could ask the same about snipers in the Army or Marines

Or any combat veteran who has personally killed someone.

[CreekDog]

7. that's not an answer

but thanks for the input.

[FarCenter]

9. It would be easier for you to find a combat veteran than an executioner.

Some veterans are bothered by having killed someone; others are not.

[CreekDog]

11. should workers comp cover any mental issues associated in part or whole with the execution?

that's the question.

[FarCenter]

15. No, they should sign a release ahead of time. If they object, get someone else.

[CreekDog]

17. who would sign that? people who are excited to kill someone?

[FarCenter]

27. Maybe someone who was sufficiently religious

A rather distant ancestor was a clergyman who presided at beheadings.

[cliffordu]

20. Nice false equivalence ya got there.

Did you buy that or make it yourself?

[TexasTowelie]

8. I have a feeling that if they already decided to participate in administering the death penalty

they are so indifferent or emotionally numb that it is too late.

[Brickbat]

10. Of course.

A quick google comes up with all sorts of stories.

Donald Cabana is one of the more famous ones.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/us/donald-cabana-warden-who-loathed-death-penalty-dies-at-67.html?pagewanted=all

Also, an advocacy group, but with testimony from prison workers:

http://www.ncadp.org/pages/harm-to-prison-workers

[Historic NY]

12. The last executioner......great story.

http://www.villagevoice.com/2005-01-18/news/the-last-executioner/

For 51 years, a family in upstate New York has closely guarded one of the most explosive, and unusual, secrets any family could have: Its late patriarch, Dow B. Hover, was New York State's executioner. Hover held the job in the 1950s and 1960s and was the last man in the state to activate the electric chair. He left behind evidence of his work—letters from Sing Sing's warden—hidden in a filing cabinet in his house.

Hover, who lived in Germantown and worked as a deputy sheriff for Columbia County, took extreme precautions to ensure no newspaper would ever reveal his identity. On the nights he drove to Sing Sing to carry out an execution, he employed a novel strategy in order to elude pesky reporters: He changed the license plates on his car before he even left his garage.

Hover worked in the infamous Sing Sing death house, where 614 people perished between 1891 and 1963—more people than at any other prison in the nation during that time. New York's last execution took place almost 42 years ago, yet the debate over the death penalty continues. Last summer, the Court of Appeals ruled that the state's death penalty was unconstitutional, and now the public debate has grown even louder. Just in the last week, the state assembly convened two public hearings, in Albany and Manhattan, on the future of New York's death penalty.................

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

13. The suicide rate among British hangmen was pretty high

But given the secrecy and generally informal nature of modern day American executions it is probably unknowable. The random weirdos who volunteer for this probably aren't the subject of long-term monitoring and executioner isn't anyones job title.

Given where we are as a society, a lot of participants probably can't wait to get a little privacy so they can rub one out.

[hlthe2b]

14. I met and somewhat got to know a WY DOC managing nurse required to participate

in the 1992 execution by lethal injection of the only one WY has killed since 1965. He held a very high position as a nurse overseeing most, if not all the correctional health staff and was coerced into participating.

Afterwards, he was never the same and quit shortly thereafter. He did talk about it a bit at the time in very general manner, so I don't think I am violating his privacy in relating this here. But, short of a diagnosis, I have to believe he suffered severe PTSD thereafter.

[lame54]

16. Read the Executioner's Song...

It affects everyone involved

[Voice for Peace]

18. one of the best films I have seen: Pierrepoint

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/pierrepoint/
The life and career of the last in a long line of highly praised British executioners is explored in this drama directed by Adrian Shergold and starring Timothy Spall in the role of Albert Pierrepoint. As a youth, Pierrepoint was discouraged from pursuing the family career by a mother who claimed that the horrific line of work spurned his father to take up drink before eventually ushering him to an early grave. Despite his father's adverse reaction to the job's more gruesome details, Albert still thinks that he has what it takes to make it as an executioner and is soon rising to the upper echelon of hangmen thanks to his speed on the job and unwavering humanity. Eventually called before General Montgomery so that he may employ his skills in dispensing the Nuremberg criminals, Pierrepoint earns the respect and admiration of his fellow Britons just as his experiences in Germany stir his increasingly troubled conscience and abolitionists set into motion a heated campaign aimed at bringing the practice of hanging to an end. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Pierrepoint

Albert Pierrepoint (30 March 1905 – 10 July 1992) was a long-serving hangman in England. He executed at least 400 people, about half of them war criminals, including William Joyce (one of the men dubbed "Lord Haw-Haw&quot , and John Amery, whom he considered the bravest man he had ever hanged.

Pierrepoint was often dubbed the Official Executioner, despite there being no such job or title. The office of executioner had traditionally been performed by the local sheriff, who increasingly delegated the task to a person of suitable character, employed and paid only when required. Pierrepoint continued to work for years in a grocery near Bradford after qualifying as an Assistant Executioner in 1932 and a Chief Executioner in 1941, in the steps of his father and uncle.

Following his retirement in 1956, the Home Office acknowledged Pierrepoint as the most efficient executioner in British history. He subsequently became a publican in Lancashire and wrote his memoirs, in which he sensationally concluded that capital punishment was not a deterrent.

There is no official tally of his hangings, which some have estimated at more than 600; the most commonly accepted figure is 435.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

21. That reminds me of a story a journalist told me years ago

They were in England covering a story when their British driver mentioned that his parents next door neighbor was Britain's last living hangman. The producer took an immediate interest thinking it would be an interesting "man of another time" story.

They interviewed the guy and found that he was just a confused and senile old weirdo who made numerous factually incorrect and inappropriate statements during the interview and knew that if the story ever aired they would be attacked for taking advantage of a senile old man. Further investigation determined that the man had only ever been an assistant and had actually been fired after being observed inappropriately touching a hanged man's penis and subsequently served time in prison himself for pornography related offences.

[Voice for Peace]

34. wow.. every story has so many branches

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

35. The conversation started along the lines of "what sort of person could do this job?"

And the journalist spoke up and told us exactly the type of person who could. A perverted weirdo.

[libodem]

19. I hope so

Psycho killers are hard to find. I think you have to be effing cold blooded to support the DP and even more so to administer the protocol. FN gross.

[PlanetaryOrbit]

22. Are executioners allowed to be conscietous objectors?

Or would they lose their job for not doing their job?

[PeteSelman]

23. If your job description is "executioner" and you refuse to do your job…

I'd imagine you'd lose it.

How the hell would you get that job in the first place?

[PlanetaryOrbit]

24. Perhaps some executioners are people who just do a 2nd police job?

Given that there are very few executions, an executioner might have to be some other prison or police employee who simply also does an executioner job when the need arises.


He can't sit around for 4 years waiting for executions that only happen once every 5 years.

[PeteSelman]

25. These days it's a doctor isn't it?

Years ago it was just a routine part of a prison guard's job if he worked on death row. I'm pretty sure it isn't something they just spring on you.

[PlanetaryOrbit]

26. OK, I stand corrected.

But can the executioner object if he feels that the person he is assigned to execute is innocent?

[CreekDog]

29. It would take a lot of sadism to hire someone to be a full time executioner

seriously. a job whose main purpose is executing people?

that's insane. harmful.

[Lost_Count]

30. There are so few that it seems like...

... It would be worth it to screen for those who could handle it.

[CreekDog]

31. how many executions could a person you're describing be a part of without harm?

how many?

[Lost_Count]

32. Depends on the results of the screening...

Optimum would be one guy like in the article above.

[CreekDog]

33. no i don't want someone who could kill dozens of people without any effect

that's sadistic.

[hatrack]

36. Book for you: "The Last Face You'll Ever See"

It's about a guy who worked in the death chamber at Parchman in Mississippi.

He (and a lot of the guys he worked with) are all kinds of f-ed up - maybe not solely as a result of their jobs, but the process chews up a lot of people beyond the condemned.