“It’s Not Gonna Leave Any Scars”: Trauma and Coping Among Execution Team Members

• Author: Casey Chiappetta,Robert Johnson
• Published date: 01 September 2021
• Date: 01 September 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00328855211029623
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/00328855211029623

The Prison Journal

2021, Vol. 101(4) 379 –397

© 2021 SAGE Publications

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DOI: 10.1177/00328855211029623

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Article

“It’s Not Gonna Leave

Any Scars”: Trauma

and Coping Among

Execution Team

Members

Casey Chiappetta1 and Robert Johnson2

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.

Keywords

executioners, death row, death house, prisons, coping trauma

1Independent researcher, Washington, USA

2American University, Washington, DC, USA

Corresponding Author:

Robert Johnson, Department of Justice, Law and Criminology, American University, 4400

Massachusetts Avenue, Kerwin Building 270,Washington, DC 20016, USA.

Email: robertjohnson@american.edu

1029623TPJXXX10.1177/00328855211029623The Prison JournalChiappetta and Johnson

research-article2021

380 The Prison Journal 101(4)

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 offi-

cers and overseen by a prison warden. The literature is limited on how those

close to executions, such as chaplains, execution teams, and wardens func-

tion, 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 per-

tinent 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 experi-

ences 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 vio-

lent 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