JACKSON, GEORGIA  – As family, friends and death penalty protesters mourned the execution of a convicted murderer at a correctional facility 50 miles outside Atlanta, Prison Executioner Rob Sterling was on a plane back to his home in southern California sipping a beer and reading Here’s the Story, a tell-all book by Maureen “Marcia Brady” McCormick. Prior to the execution, Mr. Sterling had spent several days at the Georgia prison checking and rechecking his lethal injection equipment, ensuring that release valves properly functioned and the injection tubes remained unrestricted. Fellow passengers on Mr. Sterling’s flight would never have guessed that the man chuckling as he read juicy nuggets of Brady Bunch gossip had just hours earlier ended a man’s life. Rob Sterling is a member of a small elite team of freelance executioners, known in the business as Master Executioners, who work the vast consortium of penal institutions around the country. Implementing an entrepreneur-like presence in the executions department is just one example of the Federal Bureau of Prison’s endeavors to streamline the corrections industry. While in the past many considered the job of prison executioner to be a gloomy and unrewarding occupation, today’s executioner regularly travels to exotic prison […]