Professor Deborah Denno shares her insight into the psychology of prisoners condemned to the death penalty in an Albuquerque Journal article.
An Arizona prisoner is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection in less than three weeks for killing an 8-year-old girl, marking the second condemned man to decline lethal gas since the state refurbished its gas chamber — a method of execution that hasn’t been used in the United States in more than 20 years.
Frank Atwood declined to pick a method of execution when corrections officials asked him if he wanted to die by lethal injection or the gas chamber. Lethal injection is Arizona’s default execution method when condemned prisoners refuse to make a selection.
…
Deborah Denno, a Fordham Law School professor who has studied executions for more than 25 years, said a substantial number of condemned people don’t make a selection when asked how they want to be put to death.
“No one knows the reasons (why), but one factor is they are depressed and have given up,” Denno said. “This is the least of their worries. They are going to die.”