Practicing what I preach. I enjoy meat for dinner now and then so I have raised and hunted (and butchered) my own. I am in favor of the death penalty so. to me, I have to be willing to push the button or throw the switch myself.
As for the “worse” – it depends on the day and the crime. Abuse a helpless person on the worse day possible and I could spend a week executing you. I have friends among the Abenaki and I’ve read the historical record a lot. In theory I could make someone beg for death and still stretch it out for a few more days. But I believe 99.999% of the time even folks like those in the Jennifer Daugherty case would just get a fast neck-break or slit throat at the worse.
In the paper, Osofsky et al, interviewed 50 employees and sought to determine what effects their job had on them. Most of them tried at all times to remember that the prisoners were people, deserved dignity, and that the guards should execute their duties professionally.
It’s just a job. A tragic one, but one society’s decided needs to be done. The judge, jury, and prosecution have done their jobs, and determined that this man (it’s nearly always men) needed to die. It’s the guards job to carry out the sentence. Personally, I wouldn’t volunteer for the duty, but I would do it if needed. I’d like to be paid, of course. And I’d take pride in trying to do the cleanest, most efficient job possible.
As to the psychological effect, I don’t recall that men like Albert Pierrepoint regretted what they’d done, even in the case of Timothy Evans. He may have felt that his work didn’t deter anyone, but that’s not the same thing.
No. The desire to do so is a sign of the kind of person that repulses me in all kinds of ways. They still have a desire to kill, but instead of doing it outside of a society in secret, they consider it socially acceptable; a kind of bloodthirsty self-righteousness to be proud of.
What an odd question. Nobody asks what’s in it for me when I donate blood, or when I volunteer for charity; I always figured it was just understood that I’m a darned nice guy, with interests that run the whole gamut from “helping good people” all the way over to “incapacitating bad people”, such that I’d gladly pay for either privilege.