CORRECTIONS AND THE DEATH PENALTY:
Views from those asked to participate in executions
“Sometimes
I wonder whether people really understand what goes on down here and
the effect it has on us. Killing people, even people you know are
heinous criminals, is a gruesome business, and it takes a harsh
toll…I have no doubt it’s disturbing for all of us. You
don’t ever get used to it”
“Has
an innocent man ever been executed? Probably. The judicial system is
designed to promote fairness, but anyone who expects perfection is
asking for an impossibility. Any revamping might make the system
better, but because human nature is involved, it won't make it
perfect.”
-Jim Willett, former warden at The Walls
prison, Huntsville, Texas-oversaw 89 executions, Washington Post, May
13, 2001
A
new set of victims is created among the family members of the
condemned who watch. I wondered most about the mothers who saw their
sons being put to death. Some would just wail out crying. It’s
a sound you’ll never hear any place else, an awful sound that
sticks with you”
“As
the warden and servant of the taxpayer, I tried to do the best job I
could. As a human being, I see it as a sad affair. But it’s as
a Christian that I struggle the most”
-Jim
Willett, Houston Chronicle, May 19, 2001
“There
was this big old-line officer, a well liked fellow, and he oversaw
the executions. Afterwards, he’d get very, very drunk and not
come in for several days. It’s terrible, terrible- I get very
emotional thinking about it. I certainly don’t like terrorism
or murder but there has to be a better way than putting men do
death.”
-Steve Dahlsheim, former correction
officer and Superintendent Sing Sing prison, New York, Washington
Post, 2/12/2005
“It’s
kind of hard to explain what you actually feel, you know when you
talk to a man and you kind of get to know that person, and then you
walk him out of a cell and you take him in there to the chamber and
tie him down. And then a few minutes later he’s …gone”
-Kenneth Dean, Major at Huntsville
Unit, Witness to An Execution, NPR documentary 2000
“As
I read the New Testament, I don’t see anywhere there that
killing bad people is a very high calling for Christians. I see an
awful lot about redemption and forgiveness”
-James
L. Park, former execution officer, San Quentin, California
“ If
the [condemned prisoner] was some awful monster why did I feel so bad
about it, I wondered. It has been said that men on death row are
inhuman, cold-blooded killers. But as I stood and watched a grieving
mother leave hers son for the last time, I questioned how the sordid
business of executions was supposed to be the great equalizer…The
‘last mile’ seemed an eternity, every step a painful
reminder of what waited at the end of the walk. Where was the
cold-blooded murderer, I wondered, as we approached the door to the
last-night-cell. I had looked for that man before…and I still
had not found him-I saw in my grasp, only a frightened child.
[minutes after the execution and before heading] out to the press
corps, I shook my head. ‘No more. I don’t want to do this
anymore’.”
-Don Cabana, former warden of
Parchment. Mississippi
“I
was just working in the shop and all of a sudden something just
triggered in me and I started shaking. And then I walked back into
the house and my wife asked 'What's the matter?' and I said 'I don't
feel good.' And tears -- uncontrollable tears -- was coming out of my
eyes. And she said 'What's the matter?' And I said 'I just thought
about that execution that I did two days ago, and everybody else's
that I was involved with.' And what it was something triggered within
and it just – everybody -- all of these executions all of a
sudden all sprung forward.”
-Fred Allen, member of the tie down team,
The Walls Prison Unit, suffered a nervous breakdown, Witness to an
Execution, NPR documentary 2000
“Before
working on Texas Death Row, I strongly supported capital punishment,
‘an eye for an eye’…etc. My attitude evolved into
indifference while working on death row. Working in a man’s
world was hard enough without factoring in the right or wrong of the
death penalty. It was years later that I became increasingly
convinced that the death penalty was wrong. Perhaps it was a
spiritual awakening which played a part in changing my mind. I also
believe it was the experience of the years I worked on death row,
seeing the human face of death row, which profoundly changed me.”
-Lorie J. Hopper, former correctional
officer on Texas Death Row
“The
death penalty is the privilege of the poor”
-Clinton Duffy, former warden of San
Quentin