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Activity 4: Could you be an executioner?
Activity 4: What would you do? Could you be an executioner?
- Time frame: Approximately 30 Minutes
- Setting: Online or face-to-face
- Learning Objective 13.1: List the major transformations in the death penalty from antiquity to the 20th century
- Source: Chapter 13 from Criminal (In)Justice: A Critical Introduction, 2e
by Aaron Fichtelberg
What would you do?
Could you kill somebody who was convicted of a crime? The psychology of executions is a complicated issue. While many people like to talk tough about being able to kill a person, particularly a bad person, in reality, it is an emotional issue and a difficult act for people who are asked to do it. Firing squads have often loaded one dummy cartridge in one of the executioners’ guns before executing the convicted person. Known as a “conscience bullet,” this blank was meant to allow every member of the squad to console themselves with the knowledge that they may not have killed the condemned person. Clearly, killing can produce a great deal of trauma in people, even when their target has been convicted by a court of law.
Many people who commit executions find the experience very difficult and later regret participating. One report suggests that 31% of all corrections officers involved with the death penalty suffer from some form of posttraumatic stress disorder (Bushman, 2014). Jerry Givens, a Missouri executioner who quit his job after performing 62 executions said, “If I had known what I’d have to go through as an executioner, I wouldn’t have done it. It took a lot out of me to do it. You can’t tell me I can take the life of people and go home and be normal” (Nelson, 2015).
Of course, other executioners do not have such ambivalence or regret about their job. A police officer in Utah who participated in the firing squad that killed John Albert Taylor for murder declared coolly, “I haven’t lost three seconds of sleep over it,” adding, “It’s true justice” (Hayes, 2010).
It is easy to say that one could kill another person. The reality is that executing a person, even a person who is guilty of a terrible crime, is much more difficult than you’d think, and its ultimate effects on the person who does it can be deep and long-lasting.
- Would you be willing to serve as an executioner? Why or why not?
- What if you were not completely certain that the person was guilty? Would that make a difference to you?
Learn more about the Criminal (In)Justice: A Critical Introduction, Second Edition:
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