It’s really not a good look for the judiciary — or the justice system writ large — when a judge can best be described as callous and cold-hearted, but that’s what’s going on out in Oklahoma.
The Republican attorney general, Gentner Drummond, and Steven Harpe, the director of the Department of Corrections — not exactly parties known for being soft on crime — would like to lengthen the amount of time between executions in the state, from 60 days to 90. According to them, the time between executions is necessary to ensure they’re carried out correctly and to allow employees charged with the state-sponsored death to deal with the attendant trauma. Harpe said, “Adjusting the execution schedule will allow ODOC to carry out the court-ordered warrants within a timeframe that will minimize the disruptions to normal operations. This pace also protects our team’s mental health and allows time for them to process and recover between the scheduled executions.”
The new schedule of executions has to be approved by the Court of Criminal Appeals, which previously signed off on the 60-day break between executions. However, Judge Gary Lumpkin coldly indicated they’d have to stick to the 60-day schedule.
The judge told the Department of Corrections — and I wish I were being hyperbolic here — to suck it up and get on with the killing. As reported by Slate:
He insisted that he would not buy into arguments about the traumatic effects of participating in executions, which he derisively labeled “sympathy stuff.”
He said that Drummond and Harpe needed to “man up.” “If you can’t do the job,” Lumpkin continued, “you should step aside and let somebody do it that can.”
The judge made clear that he had run out of patience with the state’s hesitation about moving forward with executions. “We set a reasonable amount of time to start this out,” Lumpkin noted, “and y’all keep pushing it and pushing it and pushing it. Who’s to say next month you won’t come in and say ‘I need 120 days?’ ”
Making clear where he will come out on the request for a revised schedule, Lumpkin concluded that “this stuff needs to stop, and people need to suck it up, realize they have a hard job to do, and get it done in a timely, proficient, professional way.”
If anyone is being unprofessional in this scenario, it’s the judge. Lumpkin is ignoring the work of criminal justice and mental health professionals that are uniform in their opinion that executions take a real toll on corrections staff. Being told by an indifferent judge to “man up” does exactly nothing to change that.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @Kathryn1@mastodon.social.
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