An Execution and its Aftermath

Book excerpt

By: Robert Johnson

Date: 1990

Source: Robert Johnson. Death Work: A Study of the Modern Execution Process. Pacific Grove, Calif.: Brooks Cole, 1990.

About the Author: Robert Johnson is a professor at the American University's (Washington, D.C.) School of Public Affairs. He has written several books about different aspects of the prison system. He had studied the concept of death by execution, in the context of the prison setting, for more than a decade when he wrote the book from which this piece is excerpted.

INTRODUCTION

There are many crimes for which the death penalty may be imposed at the state or federal level, but premeditated murder (accompanied by a variety of extenuating conditions or circumstances) is chief among them. Thirty-eight states have a provision for capital punishment (although it is "on the books" in New York, the death penalty was ruled unconstitutional in that state in 2004), although many of them have rarely employed it. The typical inmate remains on death row for ten to twenty years. During that time, appeals are repeatedly argued, continually delaying the execution date. Death row inmates are nearly always excluded from the general prisoner population, generally living in what is termed "administrative segregation" or in Special Housing Units (SHUs). Such inmates are confined to their cells for twenty-three hours per day, leaving then only for a brief (generally five minutes) shower and scheduled recreation time. Segregated inmates recreate individually, and many penitentiaries confine them to "recreation cages"—fully enclosed mesh, wire, or chain link outdoor cages that are only slightly larger than their cells. They rarely have access to educational or training programs, even by correspondence, and have limited visitation and telephone privileges. Inmates given the death penalty must learn to cope with the quite significant stress of waiting to be executed and the uncertainty of not knowing when, or if, that will occur.

Between 1972 and 1976, the Supreme Court of the United States imposed a ban on prison executions in America. Since the ban was lifted in 1976, more than 1,000 executions have been carried out in prisons across the country. Of those, about eighty-three percent have been accomplished by lethal injection, fifteen percent by electrocution, one percent by lethal gas (also called the gas chamber), and the remainder evenly divided between hanging and the employment of a firing squad. All of the states employing the death penalty but one—Nebraska, carries out all executions by the use of electrocution (the electric chair)—use lethal injections, which have been considered the most humane form of execution until rather recently. The Constitution of the United States prohibits the use of "cruel and unusual punishment," mandating that a death sentence be carried out as compassionately as possible.

In addition to execution by lethal injection and by electrocution (described in considerable detail below), death row inmates in America may still be executed by the use of lethal gas, hanging, and by firing squad. In brief, execution in a gas chamber entails securing the inmate in a chair within a sealed chamber. A bucket of sulfuric acid is located under the chair and the executioner triggers the release of sodium cyanide into the pail, causing a chemical reaction that releases cyanide gas into the air. The inmate breathes in the gas, and, after several minutes, dies of asphyxiation as a result of oxygen deprivation. Execution by firing squad entails strapping the inmate into a chair that is surrounded by absorbent containers (often, sand bags). The inmate's face is covered, and a target is pinned over the heart area. Several shooters are stationed behind a wall at a distance of about twenty feet. Historically, one or more of them have "blanks" rather than live ammunition in their rifles. When the signal is given, the firing squad aims and fires at the target. The inmate dies of blood loss and vital organ destruction. Depending on the accuracy of the shots, death may be nearly instantaneous or may take several minutes.

PRIMARY SOURCE

WITNESS TO AN EXECUTION

At eight in the evening, about the time the prisoner is shaved in preparation for the execution, the witnesses were assembled. Eleven in all, we included three news-paper and two television reporters, a state trooper, two police officers, a magistrate, a businessman, and myself. We were picked up in the parking lot behind the main office of the Department of Corrections. There was nothing unusual or even memorable about any of this. Gothic touches were notable by their absence. It wasn't a dark and stormy night; no one emerged from the shadows to lead us to the prison gates.

Mundane consideration prevailed. The van sent for us was missing a few rows of seats, so there wasn't enough room for the group. Obliging prison officials volunteered their cars. Our rather ordinary cavalcade reached the prison only after getting lost. Once within the prison's walls, we were sequestered for some two hours in a bare and almost shabby administrative conference room. A public information officer was assigned to accompany us and answer our questions, but when we grilled him about the prisoners and the execution procedure the prisoner would shortly undergo, he confessed ignorance regarding the most basic points. Disgruntled at this and increasingly anxious, we made small talk and drank coffee. We didn't psych up as the execution team did, but we did tense up as the execution time approached.

At 10:40, roughly two and a half hours after we assembled and only twenty minutes before the execution was scheduled to occur, we were taken to the basement of the prison's administration building, frisked, then led down an alley that ran along the outside of the building. We entered a neighboring cell block and were admitted to a vestibule adjoining the death chamber. Each of us signed a log, and we were then led to the witness area off to our right. To our left and around a corner, some thirty feet away, sat Jones in the condemned cell. He couldn't see us, but I'm quite certain he could hear us. It occurred to me that our arrival was a fateful reminder for the prisoner. The next group would be led by the warden, and it would be coming for him.

We entered the witness area, a room within the death chamber, and were escorted to our seats. Through the picture window filling the front wall of the witness room, we had a clear view of the electric chair, which was about twelve feet away and well illuminated. A large, high-back, solid-oak structure with imposing black straps, the chair easily dominated the death chamber. The electric chair is larger than life, a paradox that no doubt derives from its sole purpose as an instrument of death. The warden had told me, "It's the biggest chair you'll ever see," and he was right. Behind the electric chair, on the back wall, was an open panel full of coils and lights; over the chair, two domed light fixtures were strung from the ceiling. Peeling paint hung from the ceiling and walls, which were stained from persistent water leaks. (The walls have since been painted, but the leaks remain.) A stark and lonely tableau, I assure you.

Two substantial officers—one a huge, hulking figure weighing some four hundred pounds, the other not much smaller—stood beside the electric chair. The deterrent message to the approaching inmate was clear. As one of these officers put it, "You got seven hundred or so pounds waiting for you at the chair, so don't go thinking about bucking." Each officer had his hands crossed at the lap and wore a forbidding blank expression. The witnesses gazed at them and the chair, absorbed by the scene, scribbling notes furiously. We did this, I suppose, as much to record the experience as to distract ourselves from the growing tension.

A correctional officer entered the room and announced a trial run of the machinery. Seconds later, lights flashed on the control panel behind the chair, as the officer had said they would, indicating that the chair was in working order. A white curtain, open for the test, separated the chair and the witness area. After the test, the curtain was drawn, allowing the officers to prepare the cap and mask that would be placed on the prisoner once he was secured in the chair. (It was thought that observing the staff preparing these paraphernalia would needlessly upset the witnesses. The impression the team wished to leave with the witnesses, at this point at least, was that executions simply happen.) The curtain was then reopened, to be left open until the execution was over. Then it would be closed to allow the officers to discreetly remove the prisoner's body.

Several high-level correctional officers were present in the death chamber, standing just outside the witness area. There were two regional administrators, the director of the Department of Corrections, and the warden. Also present were Jones's chaplain and lawyer. Other than the chaplain's black religious garb, subdued grey pinstripes and bland correctional uniforms prevailed. All parties were quite solemn.

I knew from my research that Jones was a man with a tragic past. Grossly abused at home, he went on to become grossly abusive of others. (His crime, committed when he was on drugs, was a gruesome murder of an elderly woman.) I was told he could not describe his life, from childhood on, without talking about fighting to defend his precarious sense of self—at home, in school, on the streets, in the prison yard. Belittled by life and choking with rage, he remained hungry to be noticed, even if notoriety was all he might hope for. Paradoxically, Jones the condemned prisoner had found his moment in the spotlight—though it was a dim and unflattering light cast before a small and unappreciative audience. "He'd pose for cameras in the chair—for the attention," I'd been told earlier that day by a member of the prison's psychological treatment unit. Yet the plain truth was that Jones had to endure one more losing confrontation, this time with the state. He won't be smiling, I thought, and there will be no cameras.

Virtually no one holds up well in the face of an execution, and Jones was no exception. But Jones, like many other prisoners before him, did cope for a time, with the help of the outsiders the warden described as adjuncts to his team. In Jones's case, this group included two attorneys in addition to his personal counselor. Jones thought of his attorneys as allies and friends. His counselor, who had helped a number of other condemned men face their end, was known for her matter-of-fact, cut-and-dried approach. Jones called her by her last name, mixing affection and respect. He also spoke by phone with a journalist covering his story, with whom he had become close. These sources provided an inside view of Jones's efforts to hold himself together in the face of his impending execution.

THE EXECUTION

At 10:58, Jones entered the death chamber. He walked quickly and silently toward the chair, his escort officers in tow. Three officers maintained contact with Jones at all times, offering him physical support. Two were stationed at his elbows; a third brought up the rear, holding Jones's back pockets. The officers waiting at the chair described the approaching Jones as "staring off in a trance, with no meaning in his stares. It was like he didn't want to think about it." His eyes were cast down-ward. His expression was glazed, but worry and apprehension were apparent in the tightly creased lines that ran across his forehead. He did not shake with nerves, nor did he crack under pressure. One could say, as did a fellow witness, "Anybody who writes anything will have to say he took it like a man." But a scared and defeated man, surely. His shaven head and haggard face added to the impression of vulnerability, even frailty.

Like some before him, Jones had threatened to stage a last stand. But that was lifetimes ago, on death row, with his fellow condemned to lean on. In the death house, alone, Jones joined the humble bunch and kept to the executioner's schedule. At the end, resistance of any kind seemed unthinkable. Like so many of those before him, Jones appeared to have given up on life before he died in the chair. His execution, like those of the men who preceded him, was largely a matter of procedure.

The procedure, set up to take life, had a life of its own. En route to the chair, Jones stumbled slightly, as if the momentum of the event had overtaken him, causing him to lose control. Were he not held secure by three officers, he might have fallen. Were the routine to be broken in this or, indeed, any other way, the officers believe, the prisoner might faint or panic or become violent, and have to be forcibly restrained. Perhaps as a precaution, when Jones reached the chair, he did not turn on his own but rather was turned, firmly but without malice, by the officers in his escort. Once Jones was seated, again with help, the officers strapped him in.

The execution team worked with machine precision. Like a disciplined swarm, they enveloped Jones, strapping and then buckling down his forearms, elbows, ankles, waist, and chest in a matter of seconds. Once his body was secured, with the electrode connected to Jones's exposed right leg, the two officers stationed behind the chair went to work. One of them attached the cap to the man's head, then connected the cap to an electrode located above the chair. The other secured the face mask. This was buckled behind the chair, so that Jones's head, like the rest of his body, was rendered immobile.

Only one officer on the team made eye contact with Jones (as he was affixing the face mask), and he came to regret it. The others attended to their tasks with a most narrow focus. Before the mask was secured, Jones asked if the electrocution would hurt. Several of the officers mumbled "no" or simply shook their heads, neither pausing nor looking up. Each officer left the death chamber after he finished his task. One officer, by assignment, stayed behind for a moment to check the straps. He mopped Jones's brow, then touched his hand in a gesture of farewell. This personal touch in the midst of an impersonal procedure was, in the warden's opinion, an attempt to help the officer himself live with the death penalty. The warden noted that it also by implication helped the team of which he was a part. "It's out of our hands," the gesture seemed to imply. "We're only doing our job."

During the brief procession to the electric chair Jones was attended by a chaplain from a local church, not the prison. The chaplain, upset, leaned over Jones as he was being strapped in the chair. As the execution team worked feverishly to secure Jones's body, the chaplain put his forehead against Jones's, whispering urgently. The priest might have been praying, but I had the impression he was consoling Jones, perhaps assuring him that a forgiving God awaited him in the next life. If Jones heard the chaplain, I doubt that he comprehended his message. At least, he didn't seem comforted. Rather, he looked stricken and appeared to be in shock. Perhaps the priest's urgent ministrations betrayed his doubts that Jones could hold himself together. The chaplain then withdrew at the warden's request, allowing the officers to affix the mask.

The strapped and masked figure sat before us, utterly alone, waiting to be killed. The cap and mask dominated his face. The cap was nothing more than a sponge encased in a leather shell, topped with a metal receptacle for an electrode. Fashioned in 1979 in replica of a cap dating back to the turn of the century, it appeared decrepit, presumably from sitting in brine for a number of years. It resembled a cheap, ill-fitting toupee. "It don't fit like a normal hat," said the officer responsible for securing this piece of hardware to the prisoner, in a matter of fact tone, "it's for a person with no hair." The mask, also created in 1979 and modeled on a turn of the century original, was made entirely of leather. Somehow, it, too, looked well-worn, perhaps because it was burned in places—from saliva that had spilled from the mouths of some of the executed prisoners, then been brought to a boil by the heat of the electricity coursing through the chair and its appurtenances. The mask had two parts. The bottom part covered the chin and mouth; the top, the eyes and lower forehead. Only the nose was exposed. The effect of the rigidly restrained body, together with the bizarre cap and the protruding nose, was nothing short of grotesque.

A faceless man breathed before us in a tragicomic trance, waiting for a blast of electricity that would extinguish his life. The internal dynamics of an electrocution are quite profound. As the electrician affiliated with the team made clear to anyone who would listen, in one swift and violent instant twenty-five hundred volts of electricity, at five to seven amps, shoot through the body, starting at the head, passing through the brain, then on to the heart and other internal organs, some of which explode, before the current comes to ground through the ankle. Jones presumably did not know the details, but the general picture is vividly impressed in the minds of all condemned prisoners facing death by electrocution.

Endless, agonizing seconds passed. Jones's last act was to swallow, nervously, pathetically, his Adam's apple bobbing. I was struck by that simple movement then and cannot forget it even now. It told me, as nothing else did, that in Jones's restrained body, behind that mask, lurked a fellow human being who, at some level, however primitive, knew or sensed himself to be moments from death.

Jones sat perfectly still for what seemed an eternity but was in fact no more than thirty seconds. Finally, the electricity hit him. His body stiffened spasmodically, though only briefly. A thin swirl of smoke trailed away from his head, then dissipated quickly. (People outside the witness room could hear crackling and burning; a faint smell of burned flesh lingered in the air, mildly nauseating some people.) The body remained taut, with the right foot raised slightly at the heel, seemingly frozen there. A brief pause, then another minute of shock. When it was over, the body was inert.

Three minutes passed while officials let the body cool. (Immediately after the execution, I'm told, the body would be too hot to touch and would blister anyone who did.) All eyes were riveted to the chair; I felt trapped in my witness seat, at once transfixed and yet eager for release. I can't recall any clear thoughts from this time. One of the officers later volunteered that he shared this experience of staring blankly at the execution scene. Laughing nervously, he said,

It's a long three minutes. It hits him and then you wait. The (current) goes on a couple of times. And you wait three minutes after the machine goes off; the doctor comes in and checks him. You just, you just, you just watch the whole thing. There's nothing really (pause) going through your mind. Had Jones's mind been mercifully blank at the end? I hoped so.

An officer walked up to the body, opened the shirt at chest level, then went to get the physician from an adjoining room. The physician listened for a heartbeat. Hearing none, he turned to the warden and said, "This man has expired." The warden, speaking to the director of corrections, solemnly intoned, "Mr. Director, the court order has been fulfilled." The curtain was then drawn, and the witnesses filed out.

The deathwatch team commenced its final duties. Approaching the chair, they found Jones's body frozen in an arched position, his right leg bent and rigid from the force of the electricity. The leg had received second-degree burns where the electrode touched the skin. Jones's head was facing upward, his eyes puffy and closed. This all looked quite grotesque to me, but the warden was of the opinion that Jones had died with a look of peace on his face. (The warden could speak comparatively on this matter. The inmate before Jones had apparently fared much worse. In the warden's words, "It looked like something terrible had reached in and snatched his soul right out through the mouth on his face, like his soul had been yanked from him.") Jones's inert body was lifted from the chair. This took several men, each now wearing protective rubber gloves to shield them from disease. (The officers feared AIDS, though there had been no evidence Jones had had the dread disease. They speculated that germs would proliferate wildly in reaction to the heat generated by the electrocution.) The body was then placed on a gurney and wheeled into a nearby room to cool. Aptly, the room is known as the cooling room.

The team milled around the cooling room, congregating near the body. No one had specific duties at this point, and the mood was subdued. No congratulations were exchanged here, though the feeling seemed to be one of a job well done. The officers were clearly relieved to be finished. For the doctor and his assistants, however, work was just beginning. They used sandbags to flatten Jones's right leg and otherwise prepared the corpse for the morgue. Their labors took some six or seven minutes. By the time they were finished, everyone was ready to go home.

SIGNIFICANCE

The current controversy around lethal injection centers upon the use of one agent: pancuronium bromide. It is a muscle paralyzing agent that causes respiration to cease. Essentially, the process is this: the inmate is strapped to a gurney, and an intravenous saline drip is started in a large vein in each arm. At the prescribed time, sodium thiopental is injected, which sedates the inmate to the point unconsciousness. Pancuronium bromide is then injected, in order to paralyze the large muscles and extinguish respiration. Finally, potassium chloride is injected, which stops the heart. After the inmate is pronounced dead by the attending physician—who is legally (and ethically) prohibited from participating in the execution—an autopsy is performed. There have been numerous recent instances in which it was determined that death was caused by asphyxiation. This suggested that the inmate had not been deeply enough sedated at the time the second drug was administered and was likely to have suffered significant pain, dying essentially as the result of suffocation. One of the many concerns raised by this information is that the action of pancuronium bromide paralyzes muscles without affecting the brain. As a result, the inmate would have an awareness of suffocating—but be unable to signal suffering in any way—for the several minutes it took him to die.

Research evidence obtained during a study of autopsy and toxicology reports among executed inmates strongly suggested that nearly fifty percent of those tested were not fully anesthetized during the lethal injection process, and would have experienced high levels of pain while dying. In a study published by The Lancet in April 2005, it was concluded that many inmates were conscious during execution. This was thought to be due, in part, to the fact that drug administration occurred outside of the room in which the inmate was located, making it impossible to directly monitor the inmate's condition. In addition, the drug was administered by non-medical personnel who were almost certainly lacking in training and experience with drug administration, intravenous line placement, and individual titration of drug dosages. Pancuronium bromide, marketed as Pavulon, was previously used in animal euthanization, but its use was banned by the American Veterinary Medical Association. It was banned due to evidence that it could mask indications that the sedation had failed to effectively anesthetize the animal and that the animal could experience severe pain during the process. The authors of The Lancet study advocated a suspension of executions by lethal injection until a thorough review was done of the available results, and until public and judicial commentary could be obtained.

There are competing theories regarding the effect of capital punishment on potential criminals. The deterrence theory states that the individuals most likely to commit capital crimes do not act spontaneously (by definition, first degree murder must have been planned in advance and the same is true for most other capital offenses). They plan their crimes and contemplate the hierarchy of potential outcomes. If the deterrence theory is true, there should be a decrease in the capital crime or first degree murder rate in the period immediately following an execution that has received considerable media coverage. Conversely, the brutalization theory suggests that executions graphically demonstrate to the criminal population that human life has little or no value. This theory holds that the number of premeditated murders occurring in the aftermath of an execution is likely to increase. The brutalization theory is based on social learning theory suggesting that the modeling (exposure to a role model who performs the behavior being studied) of aggression encourages others who are easily influenced to behave in a similar way. Although there are study results consistent with both theories, there is somewhat more evidence in favor of the deterrence hypothesis, providing the execution receives significant media attention. In situations in which there is little or no media coverage, death by execution has no discernible effect on capital crime rates. There is a current move in America to abolish the death penalty by attempting to mount conclusive evidence that it violates Eighth Amendment ("cruel and unusual punishment") rights.

FURTHER RESOURCES

Books

Zimring, Franklin E. The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Periodicals

Grant, Robert. "Capital Punishment and Violence." The Humanist 64 (January-February 2004): 25-30.

Koniaris, L. G., et al. "Inadequate Anesthesia in Lethal Injection for Execution." The Lancet 365 (April 16, 2005): 1412-1414.

Stolzenberg, Lisa, and Stewart D'Alessio. "Capital Punishment, Execution Publicity and Murder in Houston, Texas." Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 94 (2004): 351-387.

Tremoglie, Michael. "Capital-Punishment Canards." Insight on the News 19 (March 4, 2003): 52.

Web sites

Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC). "Crimes Punishable by the Death Penalty." 〈http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=10〉 (accessed February 2, 2006).