'Suck it up': Judge blasts 'sympathy stuff' as death row executioners ask for trauma break

Executioners traumatized by killing Oklahoma’s death row prisoners asked a judge to slow down the pace of the procedures to help them deal with the emotional toll. The judge responded that they needed to “suck it up.” The request had been made by the state’s Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond and Steven Harpe, the director of the Department of Corrections. “This pace also protects our team’s mental health and allows time for them to process and recover between the scheduled executions,” Harpe said. But during a hearing last week, Judge Gary Lumpkin responded that he was done with “sympathy stuff” and that correctional officers needed to “suck it up” and “man up.” “If you can’t do the job, you should step aside and let somebody do it that can,” he said, according to Slate. Who’s to say next month you won’t come in and say ‘I need 120 days?”' “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.” Slate referenced a 2019 Washington Post column by criminal justice and correctional professional Allen Alt, who wrote the executions, “Leave behind a fresh trail of victims, largely hidden from public view.