The Depths of the Death Penalty

By Lucy Koeniger

WRI 111: Writing Seminar

To read student-editor Carolina Conway’s comments on the writing moves found in this essay, click on or hover over the footnotes within the text.

The controversy of the death penalty is often a two-dimensional issue to most – either one is for or against capital punishment and there is seemingly no wiggle room for any wavering opinions. However, what many are unaware of is the toll that capital punishment takes on those administering, witnessing, and issuing the fatal consequence. The bond prison guards form with inmates often makes the execution mentally and emotionally challenging. Personally, and much like others, I never took time nor energy to develop a concrete opinion on the death penalty, and instead, let my opinion waver depending on the criminal and his or her punishment. However, my extensive research into this topic allows me, and hopefully the rest of the unsure majority, to understand more fully the extent of the death penalty’s consequences and establish a staunch opinion on capital punishment. ¹ Through extensive research and the exploration of different points of view, I have concluded that the death penalty is an unethical practice proven to negatively affect more parties than one would initially assume.

Lethal injection is the most common form of the death penalty and was first adopted by the state of Oklahoma in 1977. Based on the description presented by the Death Penalty Information Center, this method appears the least grueling and painful route compared to other excruciating tactics such as electrocution, hanging, or a firing squad. William Ecenbarger, an established reporter, describes the process in a routine-like fashion, stating, “the inmate is injected with sodium thiopental —an anesthetic, which puts the inmate to sleep. Next flows pavulon or pancuronium bromide, which paralyzes the entire muscle system and stops the inmate’s breathing. Finally, the flow of potassium chloride stops the heart” (Death Penalty Information Center). This explanation describes the process of lethal injection in a flurry of scientific terminology causing the average reader to feel more inclined to accept the confusing text at face value and agree with the idea that lethal injection is the most humane route of administering the death penalty. ² However, the organization presenting this description is a non-profit that simply provides information to the public regarding the death penalty. This presentation style is unintentionally distorted. The article knowingly omits the psychological impacts the death penalty has on those in the room who are not the intended victim.

Don Cabana, a prison warden in the conservative state of Mississippi, provided his first-hand experience with the death penalty to columnist Jim Dwyer in hopes of making the hidden dangers of capital punishment, such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and long term trauma, widely known to the public. Cabana served 25 years as a prison guard before receiving a call in 1987 that would change his life forever – it was his time to assist in execution. Though Cabana did not have a close relationship with the man, the prisoner’s background of intellectual disability was enough for Cabana to feel a twinge of guilt as he administered the prisoner’s supposed-to-be-fatal electrocution. The switch flipped on, 2000 volts of electricity zipped through the man’s body, but his heartbeat refused to cease. The immense horror and realization that Cabana was needlessly torturing the criminal set in: “the condemned man’s father and his principal attorney standing less than two feet away, I [Cabana] remember telling the warden that we would have to proceed with a second attempt” (qtd. in Dwyer). ³ The second attempt ended the life of the convicted man, and left Cabana’s mental and emotional state in shambles. He now lives with the confusing feeling of compassion for a man who committed murder and contempt towards himself for torturing a man who was mentally challenged. Cabana immediately transferred to a new job following this execution and later in life stated, “‘You do not have the right to ask me, or any prison official, to bloody my hands with an innocent person’s blood. Not in the name of justice, not in the name of fairness’” (qtd. in Dwyer).

The corrections officers and prison guards who are the most likely to administer the death penalty “may spend more time with death-row prisoners than with friends or family, and can develop empathy towards these inmates” (Muller). The bond formed between those who enforce the law and those who break it creates an immense amount of guilt and psychological trauma when a prison guard has to assist in killing his or her acquaintance. Though it only slightly softens the blow, prison authorities recognize this bond and often assign multiple prison guards to a single execution process. In this case, only one switch releases the ultimately lethal drug, but the prison guards are unaware of which switch released the drug to disperse the guilt of ending a fellow human being’s life.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, a mental disorder that those exposed to trauma often suffer from, is common in 31% of corrections officers that carry out executions (Bushman). ⁴ This statistic affirms that Prison Guards conducting death penalty punishments are responsible for reports of more cases of mental trauma than Iraq War veterans. As Bushman states, the largest difference between capital execution and execution in wartimes is that prison guards are familiar with their victim and often form a bond with him or her, whereas acts of war typically involve anonymous victims and executions are regularly acts of self-defense. However, the ensuing disturbance of a death penalty order is not only distributed to the inmate and their family and friends, but jurors too. The juror, being the main determining factor of a convict’s fate, experiences a heavy conscience as well as emotional trauma after watching a family’s reaction to their loved one being sentenced to death.

Tim Jones Jr., a South Carolina criminal convicted of murdering his own five children, had a 21-day trial in which jurors endured a grueling recollection of Jones’s violent crime. The jurors remain anonymous, but one woman who served on the jury said that “many times during the trial, I went in the jurors’ bathroom and just wailed – cried my eyes out.” Another man, a military veteran, said that the trial caused his memories of war crimes in Bosnia to resurface and repeatedly trigger nightmares. Dawn McQuiston, a psychology professor at Wofford College, explained that such secondary trauma can produce symptoms such as “sudden crying, nightmares, anxiety and depression comparable to the symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder” (Death Penalty Information Center). After the jurors’ deliberation, Tim Jones was sentenced to death in 2019 (Adcox). He will be executed by means of lethal injection by a Prison Guard, which is South Carolina’s primary means of administering capital punishment. ⁵

However, most states have not followed suit. In 2006, two California anesthesiologists revisited the controversy surrounding medical officials administering a lethal injection as they refused to involve themselves in an execution (Gawande). Currently, 38 of the 50 states allow for the death penalty, and, of those, 35 require or simply allow a physician to participate in the execution (Black, Slade). However, physicians are held to a Hippocratic Oath in which they promise to treat the ill to the best of their ability – more specifically, to not harm. Many physicians view their duty of issuing a lethal injection as a direct act of disobedience towards both their career and the ethics with which they practice medicine. The American Medical Association’s Code of Medical Ethics states “a physician, as a member of a profession dedicated to preserving life when there is hope of doing so, should not be a participant in a legally authorized execution” (American Medical Association). ⁶ The death penalty does anything but “not harm” an individual. As previously explored, it is apparent that a doctor giving this terminal drug affects the life of the victim and the psychological health of the witnesses. In response to the discrepancy of doctors administering the death penalty, the state of Georgia explicitly came forward and created a law stating, “physicians who participate in executions are not practicing medicine and therefore cannot be disciplined by the Georgia Composite State Board of Medical Examiners” (Black, Slade). This direct order may appear strict to some, but it should rather be viewed as a conservative state standing up to its political majority’s beliefs to protect the health of its citizens.

In 2006 a lecture was given by Dr. Atul Gawande, an assistant professor at the School of Public Health, where he explained to hopeful Harvard medical students how certain doctors found themselves entangled with the morality of the death penalty (Gawande). Similar to my beliefs, the first doctor never held an affirmative opinion on the issue and chose to only assist in cardiac monitoring. ⁷ However, the simple act of cardiac monitoring snowballed into more, and, suddenly, “Doctor A” found himself participating directly with an act he started to greatly question. Though he remained anonymous in Gawande’s lecture series, “Doctor A” found his identity revealed and the public shame and guilt resulted in him stepping back from his role in issuing the death penalty. The thought of the general public, including his friends and family, knowing “Doctor A” participated directly in the death penalty became too much to bear. The idea of viewing the death penalty as a medical process is a justification for those who are unaware of the detrimental mental health effects and a way for those in favor to brush off the negative aspects of the “just” punishment.

Stories from physicians like “Doctor A”, along with the spiking PTSD rates among prison employees, made me recognize that the death penalty is a matter that impacts every single person involved. Trauma can follow someone for a lifetime, and a prison guard has to face the fact that he or she assisted in ending the life of someone who became an acquaintance in the cold walls of a penitentiary. ⁸ My exploration led me to realize the United States of America is willingly neglecting the greatest impacts of the death penalty. It appears that a considerable portion of the American public thinks of capital punishment in the same manner I did before conducting extensive research given that 54% of Americans in 2018 were in favor of the death penalty (Oliphant). If a wider audience knew of the information I discovered through writing this piece – trauma scarring prison guards, broken relationships between corrections officers and prisoners, and doctors wrestling with the morality of lethal injection – I would hope it would influence a government figure to expend more efforts to eradicate the death penalty and, consequently, end up affecting than just those sitting on death row. ⁹

Works Cited

Atul, Gawande. The Excellent Execution: Why Physicians Participate in Lethal Injection of Prisoners. https://ethics.harvard.edu/event/excellent-execution-why-physicians-participate-lethal-injection-prisoners. Harvard University.

Black, Lee, and Robert M. Slade. “Lethal Injection and Physicians: State Law vs. Medical Ethics.” Death Penalty Information Center, https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/stories/lethal-injection-and-physicians-state-law-vs-medical-ethics. Accessed 29 Oct. 2020.

Bushman, Brad. “It’s Time to Kill the Death Penalty.” Psychology Today, 19 Jan. 2014, http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/get-psyched/201401/it-s-time-kill-the-death-penalty.

“Description of Each Execution Method.” Death Penalty Information Center, https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions/methods-of-execution/description-of-each-method. Accessed 29 Oct. 2020.

Jim Dwyer. “No One Ever Says, ‘I’d like to Do That Again.’” The Pulitzer Prizes, https://www.pulitzer.org/article/death-penalty-can-be-hard-those-who-carry-it-out. Accessed 29 Oct. 2020.

“Jurors Report Experiencing Continuing Trauma After Serving in South Carolina Death-Penalty Trial.” Death Penalty Information Center, https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/jurors-report-experiencing-continuing-trauma-after-serving-in-south-carolina-death-penalty-trial. Accessed 29 Oct. 2020.

Muller, Robert. “Prison Executioners Face Job-Related Trauma.” Psychology Today, 11 Oct. 2018, https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/talking-about-trauma/201810/prison-executioners-face-job-related-trauma.

Oliphant, J. Baxter. “U.S. Support for Death Penalty Ticks up in 2018.” Pew Research Center, 11 June 2018, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/06/11/us-support-for-death-penalty-ticks-up-2018/.

Position Statement on Capital Punishment: Adoption of AMA Statements on Capital Punishment. American Medical Association, July 2008, https://www.psychiatry.org/File%20Library/About-APA/Organization-Documents-Policies/Policies/Position-2008-Capital-Punishment.pdf.

Seanna, Adcox. “What Life Is like on Death Row for SC Man Who Killed His 5 Kids.” Post and Courier, 19 June 2019, https://www.postandcourier.com/news/what-life-is-like-on-death-row-for-sc-man-who-killed-his-5-kids/article_fb68fcb6-92b5-11e9-87e5-1f05bfb4d007.html.

“The Death Penalty in 2019: Year End Report.” Death Penalty Information Center, https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/facts-and-research/dpic-reports/dpic-year-end-reports/the-death-penalty-in-2019-year-end-report. Accessed 29 Oct. 2020.

A Word from Lucy

The writing process of “The Depths of the Death Penalty” was unlike anything I experienced in prior high school writing courses or any other course during my limited time at Wake Forest University. Over the course of the semester, Professor Zerwick constantly encouraged the class to think of different stylistic perspectives from which they could present their writing. When it came time for the final assignment, she approached me with the idea of formulating an opinion as the essay progressed. After multiple readings of the rubric for this assignment, I wrestled with my plan of attack for writing about the death penalty – I never held a concrete opinion on it before, so how was I to forge one before my rough draft was due? Lengthy email chains with my professor, text chains with my English-major mother, and – the now-foreign concept – an in-person conference ensued, and, as a result, I allowed my research to take the reins and decided to construct my opinion as I wrote my piece and not reveal it to the audience until the concluding paragraphs. It was unlike any of my peer’s papers and a foreign concept to the formulaic style of writing high school taught me to embrace – a simple thesis stating my argument, three body paragraphs of evidence, and a conclusion to bring my argument full-circle.

Though challenging to write, the process of developing my essay went on smoothly as I advanced through draft after draft in the serene days of early March – that is, until COVID-19 interrupted my first year as a Wake Forest student and sent me packing. I composed the majority of this final draft at home in Charlotte, North Carolina. My workspace quickly transformed from the comforts of the rolling chairs on the seventh floor of the ZSR Library to my tiny Ikea desk in the corner of my childhood bedroom. Often I found it difficult to find the motivation to continue producing a piece I knew for which my writing had to be extremely meticulous. Each fact, quotation, and thought inserted carries weight in the journey of creating my opinion on the death penalty, and I knew no sentence could go without packing a punch. Soon enough, the allure of quarantine activities dwindled, so, I chose to immerse myself in my research rather than baking yet another batch of cookies or finishing yet another Netflix show. I dedicated the home stretch of my freshman year in quarantine to composing an essay I would confidently submit to my professor, and, unbeknownst to me at the time, this edition of Writing Moves.

From Professor Phoebe Zerwick

Commentary

Lucy Koeniger wrote her essay on the death penalty for her final assignment in my first-year writing seminar “Writing Justice.” The assignment asked students to research a topic related to our study of the criminal justice system and write an evidence-based argument. Lucy decided to tackle the death penalty, a subject too often reduced to rehashed, superficial arguments. Lucy approached the subject with an open mind, choosing to write the essay as an exploration of how her views changed as she confronted new material. That unstructured approach was difficult for her, but the process allowed her to discover an angle rarely considered and that is the impact of administering the death penalty on prison guards, jurors and doctors. “Trauma follows someone for a lifetime,” she wrote. “And a prison guard has to face the fact that he or she assisted in ending the life of someone who grew to be a companion in the cold walls of a penitentiary.”

There is much to admire about the essay. She synthesized material from a range of sources, combining anecdote with data. Her prose is clear and succinct. And she pulled off the first-person in way that contributed to her argument. Finally, it was the process she went through that I admire most, of allowing herself to discover what she believes through, as she “wrestled” with the material. She noted one example of this process in her reflection: “As I conducted my personal research, I found that the websites that most compelled me into seeing the death penalty as a barbaric practice were the website that used real life accounts.” With that observation, she realized the power such anecdotes would have on her readers. It’s these moments of understanding how and why we write that shine in her work and give me confidence in Lucy, the writer.

Assignment

A Researched Persuasive Essay

This assignment is designed to give you practice writing an evidence-based argument that appeals to a specific audience. Pick an issue related to our study of wrongful conviction and justice and think about an audience that you would want to persuade. You may think of your essay as a call to action or as an argument that persuades your audience to think about the issue in a new way. Your essay could take the form of a speech, a letter, or an opinion piece in a newspaper or magazine. You could also try a more subtle approach to the assignment, with an essay that explores a problem and expresses a strong point of view.

Whatever approach you choose, research both sides of the issue so that you can fully and fairly summarize the other side. You may use any of the texts we’ve studied this semester as part of your research. You will also want to consider your stance and decide which appeals from the rhetorical triangle to emphasize. Depending on your audience, you may consider writing in the first person. This is a chance for you to write in your voice, and strike a balance between concrete and abstract language. You may want to use a case study as part of your evidence. Finally, think about experimenting with your ending, beyond the traditional restatement of points you’ve already made.

The essay will be evaluated on the depth of your ideas, your thesis, the transitions used to keep your focus, overall organization, use of evidence, summary of the other side, your consideration of audience through your tone and language, the quality of your revisions, your reflection, grammar, spelling, and punctuation. As importantly, I will evaluate the quality of your peer review letters and your revisions.

Editor Comments

1
Here Lucy acknowledges how her own views on this topic have changed, making the essay more relatable. ↩︎
2
Lucy takes a rhetorical angle here, criticizing the way that the death penalty is explained by desensitized language. ↩︎
3
The use of quotes from Cabana allows the reader to hear his voice and grasp the emotion that Lucy tries to convey in her essay. ↩︎
4
Lucy balances emotional appeals throughout the essay with statistical information that adds substance her to argument. ↩︎
5
This matter-of-fact sentence juxtaposes the personal perspectives in the beginning of the paragraph, mimicking the stoicism with which death penalties are given. ↩︎
6
By citing the AMA’s ethical code, Lucy calls on the reader to consider the death penalty’s validity in the medical field and builds her argument by adding another angle. ↩︎
7
Lucy again inserts herself into the essay and pushes the reader to take a definitive stance. ↩︎
8
Lucy uses sensory imagery to convey a sense of bleakness. ↩︎
9
In this concluding sentence, Lucy sums up her argument and provides a call to action — both to readers to adopt her perspective and to legislators to eradicate the death penalty. ↩︎