What's it like to lead a death penalty “Execution Team”? A discussion with retired Prison Warden Ron McAndrew and Dr. Shanker Nesathurai

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Ever wondered about the mental health toll on members of a death penalty “Execution Team”?  We discuss this topic and others on the JustPod with two men who are both familiar with the practice of lethal injection, but for very different reasons.   

Ron McAndrew is a retired Warden at Florida State Prison, where he led the Execution Team, supervised the execution of three inmates by electric chair, and observed the execution of others by lethal injection, before becoming a death penalty opponent.  Ron explains where the bodies of the executed are buried if no family claims them for private burial, and his decision to stop taking the Execution Team for the traditional post-execution breakfast, after he ran into an executed inmate’s defense counsel at the same restaurant.  

Dr. Shanker Nesathurai is a Professor of Medicine at McMaster University in Canada.  His article, “America’s Continuing Experience With Lethal Injection Executions,” appears in the Fall 2024 edition of Criminal Justice Magazine, published by the Criminal Justice Section of the American Bar Association.