Florida | Former prison warden who oversaw executions urges corrections workers to not participate in them
It was the ninth Florida execution this year.
For their own sake, I urge Florida’s corrections workers to refuse to carry out another one.
Before you dismiss me as some soft lefty, you should know that I am an Air Force veteran.
I supervised executions
But what's more important is that I have intimate knowledge of what these executions are doing to the people whose job it is to carry them out.
As warden of Florida State Prison, I oversaw three of the last electric chair executions in our state.
As someone who supervised executions in Florida, I am urging prison officials to refuse to participate in any further intentional taking of someone’s life.
The memories of the men whose lives I helped take still haunt me decades later.
I deeply regret my participation in executions.
Lifelong trauma for corrections officers
The pace of executions in Florida has become unrelenting—and that's why I am deeply concerned about the lifelong trauma we are asking state workers to take on.
Numerous corrections officers in Florida – and in other states – have tried to self-medicate with alcohol or other substances in an attempt to make the nightmares stop.
Some have taken their own lives.
Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond recognized this not long ago.
Drummond argued that one execution a month was too much for that state’s corrections officers.
At his request, Oklahoma courts slowed the pace to no more than one execution every 90 days.
But even killing one defenseless prisoner is terribly damaging.
Ultimately, what helped me heal was disavowing executions altogether and speaking out against the death penalty.
I am not alone among corrections executives who ended their careers and became advocates against executions.
The last three heads of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation & Correction, who between them oversaw 56 executions, all became advocates to end them.
I know of others from Oregon, Georgia, South Carolina and Virginia.
We are looking out for the well-being of those who do this dirty work.
But we now also understand that the death penalty is unfairly applied.
We can see that clearly in the execution of Dusty Spencer.
If that trial was held under today’s law, Florida could not execute him.
My message to Florida corrections workers
I hope that Gov. DeSantis can look to the example of Ohio’s Republican pro-life Gov. Mike DeWine.
After nearly 50 years of trying to make capital punishment work, DeWine recently concluded that executions do nothing to keep us any safer than sentencing murderers to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
But until Florida abandons the death penalty, there’s one way I know that corrections workers in Florida's state prisons can protect their mental health.
Do NOT let the state of Florida inflict trauma upon you that will last a lifetime.
Do NOT participate in any more executions.
Source: heraldtribune.com, Staff, June 27, 2026. Ron McAndrew is the former warden of three Florida state prisons, including death row at Florida State Prison. He is a founding advisory committee member of Death Penalty Action, a nonprofit group working to abolish the death penalty in the United States.
"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."
— Oscar Wilde
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."
— Oscar Wilde
Death Penalty News
For a World without the Death Penalty
It’s not for everyone, but that alone doesn’t invalidate the death penalty, just as your years of experience don’t automatically validate your position. I appreciate your service, but your opinion is still just that—an opinion.
ReplyDeleteDo you think the people who committed these crimes cared about the lives they were destroying? I understand your perspective, and I don’t necessarily believe the death penalty is a deterrent either. But does the fact that it isn’t a deterrent make it without purpose?
Some things in society exist not because they’re ideal, but because they’re considered necessary evils. I believe the death penalty falls into that category. This debate can go in circles—war, innocence, justice, rehabilitation, wrongful convictions—but reasonable people can disagree on those issues.
If anything, my criticism is with the system itself. If it could be made more efficient, more consistent, and better at preventing wrongful convictions while carrying out sentences in a timely manner, I think it would serve justice more effectively.