As Oklahoma prepares for its first double-execution since 1937 after an unprecedented dispute between two courts, the governor and the legislature, the former warden of the state prison says he has come to see the death penalty as a very expensive punishment that fails to deter crime or bring closure to most victims’ families.

Randy Workman saw intimate details of the death penalty that are kept from the public eye in the United States. As the warden of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester he handpicked secret executioners, walked people to their deaths and saw the process of obtaining lethal injection drugs. He participated in 32 executions during various jobs in more than two decades working for the corrections department before retiring in 2012.



On Tuesday Oklahoma will kill Clayton Lockett and Charles Warner, at 6pm and 8pm respectively. Both were convicted of murder and had sought to challenge the constitutionality of a law keeping secret the source of the drugs the state will use to execute them.



“The only thing I can tell you for certain whenever people say do you believe that the death penalty will stop crime, I can guarantee you that person will never commit a crime again, and that is as far as I’m going to say,” Workman said. “Do we need to have the death penalty? Yeah I’m an advocate for it. I think we do. Is it cost effective? Gosh no. We spend millions of dollars on these cases and going through the process and the end result is the family, do they feel vindicated? I’d say 90% of the time the people I’ve seen don’t.”

'They wasn't thinking about the death penalty'

Workman sat at the wooden kitchen table of his home. Outside were the 10 acres of land he and his wife own, home to turkeys, dogs, horses and chickens. His hair was a short buzz, and he sported a large salt and pepper goatee and blue jeans. His shirt was emblazoned with “live free,” “ride free” and an eagle, a nod to his love for motorcycles. He spoke of his life since leaving the prison as one of a full-time grandfather to his family and bible study teacher at the Church of Christ.



During three interviews since December, he reflected on the executions he oversaw at the 100-year-old penitentiary in McAlester, home to the state’s death chamber. He said he watched 30 lethal injections and in two other cases, he made arrangements for the executions at the prison but did not witness them. That's just under a third of the 110 executions carried out by the state since 1976.



Based on those experiences, Workman said he has come to believe that the threat of execution does not prevent people from committing murder.

“I can tell you the people that I’ve executed, when they committed crimes, they didn’t, wasn’t thinking about the death penalty and a lot of them were high, or a lot of them in the generation of people we’re dealing with today don’t have a lot of forethought about the end result,” he said.



Workman’s cousin was murdered in 2000. The prosecutor approached his mother, and she then sought Workman’s advice about whether to seek the death penalty.

“I said here’s the deal, if you get the death penalty and you’re successful, you going to spend the next eight to 12 years back and forth in court and you’re going to relive your son’s death, because he has all these appeals,” Workman said. He advised her that after the lethal injection, she would likely feel that her son’s killer died too easily.

“I’ve seen some mothers that had some serious broken hearts that said this doesn’t end it for me,” he said. “This isn’t justice to me. This doesn’t do it.”

Asked if he thought the state should put a painful execution on display, Workman said no.

“I wouldn’t be a part of anything like that,” he said.

Under Oklahoma law, electrocution and the firing squad are available as alternative means of execution, but only if the primary method of lethal injection is found to be unconstitutional. Recent challenges have re-affirmed its constitutionality.

'Hate to see him go ... there was a lot of value left in him'

Prisoners reach through the bars in the F Cellhouse at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary where they are housed in old-fashioned cells with metal bars. Photograph: Associated Press Photograph: Associated Press

Workman said he would take time to review inmates’ criminal cases before the executions. He could not sleep during the days around his first execution, he said.

“I’ve done 32 cases and I’d say, you know, overwhelmingly 90-95% I felt strongly the person was very guilty and needed to be executed according to the laws of the land,” Workman said. “The others I don’t know I thought maybe they would have been, they would have been good to have probably been converted over to life sentences and would have probably felt better about it, but it wasn’t my call.”



Other former prison officials in the United States have spoken about their experiences with the death penalty. A former warden in Georgia has spoken about the nightmarish psychological toll of being involved in executions.

Workman got to know Billy Don Alverson’s case at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary and believed him to have played a lesser role in the murder of convenience store clerk Richard Yost than the others convicted in the case. Workman thought Alverson had matured during more than a decade in prison: his time was productive, and he spoke to children to try to sway them from a life of crime, Workman said.

“He was doing real well,” Workman said. “But it was a very horrific crime, and he was guilty. He was guilty, but he was very young when he committed it. And I would have liked to see him get clemency, but that wasn’t my decision.”

The judge in Alverson’s case, Ned Turnbull, made the rare move of telling the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board that Alverson should be spared, saying he was the least responsible for the killing. The judge said he wished he’d conducted the trials differently, according to an Associated Press account of the hearing. The board voted 3-2 against him, and the state killed Alverson in 2011. He was one of three people executed for Yost’s death.

By the time Workman and Alverson walked to the execution room, Workman said he felt they both knew they had done everything they could.

“Hate to see him go,” Workman said. “I think there was a lot of value left in him.”

Orders of the state

Workman saw people react from “one extreme to the other” when facing their own death.

“Some of them were ready and was calm and collected, some of them was scared to death, some was sort of stoic,” he said. “Had a couple of times they was very angry, and very, very angry and condemning us for performing the act, if you will, and basically I’ve had a couple that claimed you’re executing an innocent person.”

While many followed a kind of code among prisoners that they should walk bravely to their execution, Workman saw a man lose his composure and fall. Weak-kneed, the man was unable to walk.

Another man allegedly fought back. Former deputy warden Bobby Boone was present at that execution. A group of five officers called the Escort Team were with the man. “So he just kind of started resisting and struggling,” Boone said in an interview. “And they took him by each arm and by each leg and laid him down on the table and the fifth one strapped him in.”

Neither Workman nor Boone could remember the name of the man who resisted.

“He was saying something I couldn’t remember what it was," Boone said. "Couldn’t understand him.”

While states have struggled to find drugs for executions, Workman said that when he worked for the corrections department, Oklahoma generally had a pharmacist order it. Oklahoma’s secretive drug purchasing process is funded with payments from petty cash.

“We would get it from a warehouse or a pharmaceutical, third or fourth generation person from the original company, and that’s basically how we would get it,” Workman said. “We didn’t go down to the company and say: ‘Hey I need this for an execution.’ We would get it as a prescription from a physician and go to the pharmacy and the pharmacy would order it either from the warehouse or the distributor, and they could care less what we used it for.”

A European-led boycott since 2011 has dried up the supply of drugs for states’ executions. Many have since turned to compounding pharmacies, which are less well regulated than traditional pharmacies, and passed laws keeping the source of the drugs secret.

Workman said he would pick as executioners people he knew very well and knew to have strong character. They were paid $300 cash. They were given an orientation and would observe an execution first. He interviewed them and asked them why they would want to do it, and they said they wanted to carry out the order of the state.

During his employment with the corrections department, Workman said he never directly pushed the button during a lethal injection. “A guilty person it wouldn’t be as much of an issue to me, but on the offhand chance that somebody wasn’t, I would never take that chance with my life,” he said.