Who are the death row executioners? Disgraced doctors, suspended nurses and drunk drivers

[Jilly_in_VA]

Being an executioner is not the sort of job that gets posted in a local wanted ad. Kids don’t dream about being an executioner when they grow up, and people don’t go to school for it. So how does one become a death row executioner in the US, and who are the people doing it?

This was the question I couldn’t help but ask when I began a book project on lethal injection back in 2018. I’m a death penalty researcher, and I was trying to figure out why states are so breathtakingly bad at a procedure that we use on cats and dogs every day. Part of the riddle was who is performing these executions.

Seven years later – and with the Trump administration promising more executions to come – I have an answer, sort of.

We do not, and for the most part cannot, know precisely who is under the executioner’s hood. State secrecy statutes put the equivalent of a Harry Potter cloak of invisibility over these state-sanctioned killers. But litigation files and investigative journalism have revealed a number of executioners’ identities, allowing us to peek behind the veil of secrecy for a glimpse of who these people are.

Consider Missouri’s chief executioner from 1995-2006, Dr Alan Doerhoff, who was responsible for 54 of Missouri’s 65 executions between 1976 and 2006. He didn’t push the syringes – shockingly, non-medical prison guards did that – but he did most everything else. “Nobody will ever do as many [executions] as I have,” he would later boast.

Doerhoff’s identity was revealed when a lawyer for a condemned prisoner checked the prison’s chemical dispensary logs and discovered that 2.5 grams of sodium thiopental (the drug used to anesthetize the prisoner) had been used in previous executions. The state’s protocol called for 5 grams, double that amount. The prisoner sued.


https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/17/death-row-executioners

Because no reputable medical person would do this job

[Journeyman]

1. "The Hangman at Home," by Carl Sandburg . . .

What does a hangman think about
When he goes home at night from work?
When he sits down with his wife and
Children for a cup of coffee and a
Plate of ham and eggs, do they ask
Him if it was a good day's work
And everything went well or do they
Stay off some topics and talk about
The weather, baseball, politics
And the comic strips in the papers
And the movies? Do they look at his
Hands when he reaches for the coffee
Or the ham and eggs? If the little
Ones say, Daddy, play horse, here's
A rope—does he answer like a joke:
I seen enough rope for today?
Or does his face light up like a
Bonfire of joy and does he say:
It's a good and dandy world we live
'In. And if a white face moon looks
In through a window where a baby girl
Sleeps and the moon-gleams mix with
Baby ears and baby hair—the hangman—
How does he act then? It must be easy
For him. Anything is easy for a hangman,
I guess.

[Iggo]

2. Killers. (n/t)

[canetoad]

3. I'm reading the link from the Guardian story

https://www.lakeexpo.com/news/top_stories/lake-hospitals-letters-deal-crucial-blow-to-credibility-of-execution-doctor/article_798bc708-257f-5618-80c0-e526f0b5f6d2.html

About the investigation into this guy. I'd hazard a guess that he lied about the dyslexia or didn't present the whole truth, to cover up for knocking off half the sodium thiopental and selling it for profit. Just a guess.....