You are quite right, jake. If you are the “Public Executioner” you have to be prepared to carry out your duties without fear or favour, etc. You could not pick and choose who you executed on the State’s behalf basing your choice on your own personal beliefs.
Those proponents of Capital Punishment who say “I would definitely pull the lever” are usually deluding themselves. Their statement usually comes after they have read details of a particularly harrowing case where (in their opinion) the perpetrator “deserves the rope – it’s the only language they understand”. However, next week they would be putting the noose around the neck of Tony Martin (the Norfolk farmer who shot a burglar). He was originally convicted of murder, and before 1968 he may well have been hanged if his appeal had failed.
Albert Pierrepoint (the UK’s last hangman, who executed over 600 people) was said to have turned against the idea of Capital Punishment after he had to hang one of the regulars, James Corbitt who frequented his pub. But it seems strange that he chose to change his opinion (suggesting that the practice solves nothing and is mainly driven by the need for revenge) only after somebody he knew was the subject of his art. There was no doubt about Corbitt’s guilt, or that he should face the death penalty (under the law as it then was). But Pierrepoint had no similar qualms about others he put to death, such as Timothy Evans, Derek Bentley or Ruth Ellis, where the case for execution was more questionable.
For all its faults we do have a legal system in the UK which is supposed to exact justice on behalf of the public and in return they undertake not to do so themselves. It is unfortunate that at present that deal is being broken on a large scale, but that is another issue.