General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCan administering the death penalty cause harm to directly or indirectly to participants in it?
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
(1,115 posts)If so done is diagnosed with an injury, physical or mental, resulting from their job, that person is entitled to compensation.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)the person you murdered was probably innocent.
CreekDog
(46,192 posts)TheMathieu
(456 posts)But any real humans in those positions probably struggle with a lot of darkness.
Warpy
(111,329 posts)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
(50,414 posts)FarCenter
(19,429 posts)Or any combat veteran who has personally killed someone.
CreekDog
(46,192 posts)but thanks for the input.
FarCenter
(19,429 posts)Some veterans are bothered by having killed someone; others are not.
CreekDog
(46,192 posts)that's the question.
FarCenter
(19,429 posts)CreekDog
(46,192 posts)FarCenter
(19,429 posts)A rather distant ancestor was a clergyman who presided at beheadings.
cliffordu
(30,994 posts)Did you buy that or make it yourself?
TexasTowelie
(112,370 posts)they are so indifferent or emotionally numb that it is too late.
Brickbat
(19,339 posts)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
(37,452 posts)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 workletters from Sing Sing's wardenhidden 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 1963more 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
(8,692 posts)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
(102,343 posts)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
(35,315 posts)It affects everyone involved
Voice for Peace
(13,141 posts)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" , 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
(8,692 posts)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
(13,141 posts)Sen. Walter Sobchak
(8,692 posts)And the journalist spoke up and told us exactly the type of person who could. A perverted weirdo.
libodem
(19,288 posts)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
(155 posts)Or would they lose their job for not doing their job?
PeteSelman
(1,508 posts)I'd imagine you'd lose it.
How the hell would you get that job in the first place?
PlanetaryOrbit
(155 posts)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
(1,508 posts)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
(155 posts)But can the executioner object if he feels that the person he is assigned to execute is innocent?
CreekDog
(46,192 posts)seriously. a job whose main purpose is executing people?
that's insane. harmful.
Lost_Count
(555 posts)... It would be worth it to screen for those who could handle it.
CreekDog
(46,192 posts)how many?
Lost_Count
(555 posts)Optimum would be one guy like in the article above.
CreekDog
(46,192 posts)that's sadistic.
hatrack
(59,592 posts)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.