Texas executions reap heavy toll on prison staff

[Greg]

Texas executions reap heavy toll on prison staff | AFP

HUNTSVILLE, United States (AFP) — From the chaplain who shares the condemned prisoner's final hours to the guard who attaches the needles and the prison director who orders the fatal injection: the relentless march of Texas executions is taking a heavy toll.

In the three years from 1998 to 2001 that Jim Willett ran "The Walls" prison in Huntsville, Texas, he oversaw the executions of 89 people, personally giving the order for the death sentence to proceed once the condemned prisoner had finished their final statement.

With the passage of time most of the names and faces have blurred in his memory, but he has been forever changed by "the biggest, the hardest thing to deal with" in his life.

"You see that person lie here, perfectly healthy, and you know that within minutes he's gonna be dead, and he's gonna be dead because I'll give the signal to kill him. That just doesn't happen in real life," Willett, 58, told AFP.

Presbyterian pastor Carroll Pickett, 74, was a chaplain at the notorious prison which has now executed more than 400 people since the death penalty was reinstated in the United States in 1976.

"It takes a toll on you, and you never know what the toll is. I had a triple bypass two years after I retired," he told AFP.

He walked the final hours with 95 death row inmates from 1980 to 1995, who would arrive at a special holding block in the prison at dawn from the Texas death row center and die at midnight the same day.

Pickett would stay with them, even keeping a calming hand on their leg as the condemned took their last breath strapped to a gurney with a lethal cocktail of drugs pumping through their veins.

He remembers every face, every name, every story.

One wanted to write a letter, another drank a last soda, another died with a cigar in his pocket. Some wanted to hear their favorite song for the last time, others wanted to sing or play a final game of chess.

"I would spend that last day with him, make it as comfortable as possible. A lot of them had a lot of things to confess, especially after 10:00 pm," Pickett said.

"I've had people confess to crimes they weren't even convicted for," he said, while others "talked vividly about their crimes. Sometimes so vividly the guards were becoming sick."

When he first began his "ministry of presence" at the jail, Pickett was in favor of the death penalty.

But over time his views have gradually changed, faced with the never-ending parade of young, poor, often illiterate men condemned to die for crimes, most of which were far from the worst atrocities committed in the country.

"Practically everyone I met was not the same person that committed the crime. Some of them I would have brought them back home without any problem. Most of them were not really mean people," he said.

And he believes that many of the 95 people whose final hours he sought to alleviate were innocent of the crimes for which they died.

"I could feel it. Not that I'm so smart, but they come in with a different attitude. A person who is truly innocent, and I've seen too many of those, is not going to fight," in order not to worsen the ordeal of their families, he said.

Even the guards who had to carry out such an onerous duty "were good officers but this experience changed their lives," he said.

"Of course, they all quit after a while. Some of them got sick, had a nervous breakdown, a lot of them went on to work in a private prison, where they wouldn't have to take part in executions."

Some executions reap a higher toll than others. After the death in February 1998 of Karla Faye Tucker for murder, despite an international outcry, the guards who strapped her down resigned, while the prison director retired, Willett said.

Both Willett and Pickett would try to deal with their emotions by recounting the details of each execution just hours after it happened.

Willett poured out his feelings onto a computer before his retirement. Today he is the director of a Texas prisons museum which houses "Old Sparky," the electric chair used in 361 executions.

Pickett meanwhile used to recount the day's events into a dictaphone, sitting on the floor of his living room.

But even then the pastor's job was not necessarily done. In a third of all cases, he was called on to officiate at the condemned man's funeral in the small cemetery next to the prison -- the final resting place of those whose families failed to claim the body.

Copyright © 2007 AFP. All rights reserved

[Crosstimbers Okie]

I have Jim Willet's book, Warden. It's a good read and full of pictures. I did lose respect for him when he all but admits in the book that, as Warden, he provided cigarettes to his pet inmate who maintained the flower bed in front of the prison and then had a too-alert tower officer transferred to another position to protect the thug from being found out.

Maybe Cory has some insight into the effect of executions on staff. Working at OSP where the number of inmates executed is second only to Huntsville he may.

[Cory]

From the chats I have had with people involved at OSP it is always outside sources that come in to do the executions. The CERT team is on hand for transport to and from the Execution Cell but the 3 people that man the syringes are behind a wall with no visibility of the inmate and they are not current staff. They are retired CO's or LE. They are brought in 2-3 hours ahead of time by a back entrance in hoods to conceal their identity. They then leave the antechamber next to the execution room 1-2 hours after.

Again.. Haven't spoken to the Chaplin all that much and certainly not about executions, but as far as the support staff I haven't heard anything.

[castone1]

It is part of what we do and I thank the guys who do it.