'This man has expired'
Johnson, Robert
THIS NAN HAS EXPIRED' WITNESS TO AN EXECUTION ROBERT JOHNSON The death penalty has made a comeback in recent years. In the late sixties and through most of the seventies, such a thing seemed...
...We take his identity...
...there are no grudges but neither is there compassion or fellow-feeling...
...But the truth was that the prisoner wasn't smiling, and there were no cameras...
...This is not entirely unprecedented...
...I don't know if there is a right answer...
...I felt trapped in my witness seat, at once transfixed and yet eager for release...
...I roll his pants' leg up, place a piece [electrode] on his leg, strap his leg in....I've got all the moves down pat...
...Right leg...
...Seconds later, lights flashed on the control panel behind the chair indicating that the chair was in working order...
...These are inventoried by the staff, recorded on a one-page checklist form, and marked for disposition to family or friends...
...A public information officer was assigned to accompany us and answer our questions...
...A faceless man breathed before us in a tragicomic trance, waiting for a blast of electricity that would extinguish his life...
...If you will, they are every good or decent person, called upon to represent the community and use their good offices to testify to the propriety of the execution...
...When I go home after one of these things," said one, man, "I sleep like a rock...
...At 10:40 p.m., roughly two-and-a-half hours after we were assembled and only twenty minutes before the execution was scheduled to occur, the witnesses were taken to the basement of the prison's administrative building, frisked, then led down an alleyway that ran along the exterior of the building...
...The first one was grisly," a team member confided to me...
...Commonweal, January 15, 1988...
...So you're aware what he's doing...
...In the late sixties and through most of the seventies, such a thing seemed impossible...
...If he wants a cigarette, well he's not allowed to keep matches so you light it for him.' You've got to pour his coffee, too...
...I can't recall any clear thoughts from that moment...
...I hoped so...
...They may be numb, sort of in a trance...
...It looked decrepit and resembled a cheap, ill-fitting toupee...
...You can see mem going down," said one officer...
...The warden at the institution I was observing praised members of the team as solid citizens-in his words, country boys...
...The condemned man sat perfectly still for what seemed an eternity but was in fact no more than thirty seconds...
...You know, I don't take it like I'm having a grudge against this person and this person has done something to me...
...I find the less you got on your mind, why, the better you'll carry it out...
...Officers cater to the condemned because contented inmates are easier to keep under control...
...I interviewed each officer on the team after the fifth execution, then served as an official witness at a sixth electrocution...
...Nor are they given medication to ease their anxiety or win their compliance...
...But one can never trust even a contented, condemned prisoner...
...Gothic touches were notable by their absence...
...The executioners went home and set about their lives...
...There were two regional administrators, the director of the Department of Corrections, and the prison warden...
...Though this officer may technically work alone, his teammates view the execution as a shared responsibility...
...He explained that there was a certain amount of fumbling, which made the execution seem interminable...
...The rewards of practice are reaped in improved performance...
...So it's just very simple things...
...By the accounts of the death-watch officers, these more typical prisoners are beaten men...
...I see...
...Each had his hands crossed at the lap and wore a forbidding, blank expression on his face...
...The prisoner moves in a limbo existence devoid of food or possessions...
...By the book...
...He seeks out kindred spirits, men who see killing condemned prisoners as a job-a dirty job one does reluctantly, perhaps, but above all a job one carries out dispassionately and in the line of duty...
...The death-watch officers see condemned prisoners as men with explosive personalities...
...The prisoner is never out of at least one officer's sight...
...Most all of 'em is real, real weak...
...As the team and administrators prepare to commence the good fight, as they might say, another group, the official witnesses, are also preparing themselves for their role in the execution...
...There was some talk about delayed reactions to the stress of carrying out executions...
...Electrodes were attached to the cap holding his head and to the strap holding his exposed right leg...
...The prisoner walked quickly and silently toward the chair, an escort of officers in tow...
...To make sure that line of duty is a straight and accurate one, the death watch team has been carefully drilled by the team leader in the mechanics of execution...
...Most condemned prisoners fight to save their lives, not to have them taken...
...The clothes are unremarkable in appearance, except that velcro replaces buttons and zippers, to reduce the chance of burning the body...
...After the prisoner has been shaved, he is then made to shower and don a fresh set of clothes for the execution...
...Nothing could have been further from the truth...
...he has seen the last of such things, unless he receives a stay of execution and rejoins the living...
...An officer walked up to the body, opened the shirt at chest level, then continued on to get the physician from an adjoining room...
...It told me, as nothing else did, that in the prisoner'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...
...Do it and that's it...
...We grilled this official about the prisoner and the execution procedure he would undergo shortly, but little information was to be had...
...Once the prisoner was seated, again with help, the officers strapped him into the chair...
...They wait meekly to be escorted to their deaths...
...They don't seem to have anything to say...
...His eyes were turned downward, his expression a bit glazed...
...A . white curtain, opened for the test, separated the chair and the witness area...
...Keeping a condemned prisoner calm means, in part, serving his immediate needs...
...The prisoner's chaplain and lawyer were also present...
...The cap was nothing more than a sponge encased in a leather shell with a metal piece at the top to accept an electrode...
...Critical milestones have been passed...
...They showered, ate, made love, slept, then took a day or two off...
...Death work gains momentum when an execution date draws near and the prisoner is moved to the death house, a short walk from the death chamber...
...His hands and feet are cuffed, and he is dressed only in undershorts...
...As one officer told me in blunt terms, "Come eight o'clock, we've got a dead man...
...A correctional officer entered the witness room and announced that a trial run of the machinery would be undertaken...
...When the time comes, they must deliver the prisoner up for execution as quickly and unobtrusively as possible...
...And so far, you know, it's all come together, we haven't had any problems...
...The staff is confident that the prisoner's capacity to resist is now compromised...
...Only the nose was exposed...
...Listen to the officers' accounts: A lot of 'em die in their minds before they go to that chair...
...I shall draw upon their words to describe the death work they carry out in our name...
...There were technical problems as well: The generator was set too high so the body was badly burned...
...The witnesses gazed at them and the chair, most of us scribbling notes furiously...
...All eyes were riveted to the chair...
...It is fair to say that the death penalty is alive and well in America, and that executions will be with us for the foreseeable future...
...As one officer put it: I'm not sure the death penalty is the right way...
...The curtain was then drawn and the witnesses filed out...
...The subjects of typical executions remain anonymous to the public and even to their keepers...
...Still, I can't help but note that this may be a revealing slip of the tongue...
...There is a last meal...
...Because if he wants to make a call to his family, well, you'll have to dial the number...
...A picture window covering the front wall of the witness room offered a clear view of the electric chair, which was about twelve feet away from us and well illuminated...
...En route to the chair, the prisoner stumbled slightly, as if the momentum of the event had overtaken him...
...I've never known of one or heard of one putting up a fight....By the time they walk to the chair, they've completely faced it...
...The team leader describes the division of labor in the following exchange: The execution team is a nine-officer team and each one has certain things to do...
...Mundane considerations prevailed...
...The death penalty is, after all...
...I know my team...
...Beginning with the execution of Gary Gilmore in 1977, over 100 people have been put to death, most of them in the last few years...
...The effect of a rigidly restrained body, together with the bizarre cap and the protruding nose, was nothing short of grotesque...
...During the brief procession to the electric chair, the prisoner was attended by a chaplain...
...Gilmore's execution generally, like his parting fete, was decidedly out of step with the tenor of the modern death penalty...
...It's just like clockwork...
...Most of the time you'd only need one or two people to carry out an execution, as weak and as humble as they are...
...For condemned prisoners, like Gilmore, who come to accept and even to relish their impending deaths, a genuine calm seems to prevail...
...it goes with the hair...
...We entered the witness area, a room within the death chamber, and took our seats...
...The prisoners, already home, had been indifferent to the proceedings, as they always are unless the condemned prisoner had been a figure of some consequence in the convict community...
...Their objective is to keep the prisoner alive and "on schedule...
...Obliging prison officials volunteered their cars...
...As a rule, the man is overwhelmed...
...The men who strapped him in remembered what it was like to touch him...
...In one officer's words, "We just keep them right there and keep talking to them-about anything except the chair...
...Endless seconds passed...
...Two officers, one a hulking figure weighing some 400 pounds, stood alongside the electric chair...
...The desire for executions that take place "without any sensation no doubt refers to the absence of media sensationalism, particularly if there should be an embarrassing and undignified hitch in the procedures, for example, a prisoner who breaks down or becomes violent and must be forcibly placed in the electric chair as witnesses, some from the media, look on in horror...
...That is, to move him through a series of critical and cumulatively demoralizing junctures that begin with his last meal and end with his last walk...
...Afterwards, the curtain was reopened, and would be left open until the execution was over...
...Small protests were going on outside the walls, we were told, but we could not hear them...
...Hearing none, he turned to the warden and said, "This man has expired...
...Three minutes passed while the officials let the body cool...
...He's liable to snap, he's liable to pass out...
...They go through stages...
...Coming on the heels of a gradual but persistent decline in the use of the death penalty in the Western world, it appeared to some that executions would pass from the American scene [cf...
...The execution schedule, the officer pointed out, is"picking up momentum, and we don't want to lose control of the situation...
...During the last five or six hours, two specific team officers are assigned to guard the prisoner...
...An essential part of the training is practice...
...He'd pose for cameras in the chair-for the attention," his counselor had told me earlier in the day...
...He had been grossly abused as a child, and went on to become grossly abusive of others...
...These men seem barely human and alive to their keepers...
...But that was lifetimes ago, on death row...
...As part of a larger study of the death work process, I studied one such group...
...They do not see their fate in romantic terms...
...The condemned man is taken from his cell and seated in the middle of the tier...
...At this point, the prisoners may steadfastly maintain that their executions will be stayed...
...it reduces physical resistance to electricity and minimizes singeing and burning...
...The officers of the team are closer to the killing and dying, and are less apt to wax abstract or eloquent in describing the process...
...The warden reads the court order, known popularly as a death warrant...
...no one emerged from the shadows to lead us to the prison gates...
...The death watch or execution team members refer to themselves, with evident pride, as simply"the team...
...One official sat up picturing how the prisoner looked at the end...
...He was, I knew from my research, a man with a checkered, tragic past...
...We simply don't give the subject much thought...
...We watch him all the time to prevent him from committing suicide...
...Here's how one officer made this point: Well, you can't help but be involved with many of the things that he's involved with...
...The warden or his representative, in turn, must by law preside over the execution...
...At eight in the evening, about the time the prisoner is shaved in preparation for the execution, the witnesses are assembled...
...As one officer on the death watch told me in no uncertain terms: "We all take part in it...
...We did this, I suppose, as much to record the experience as to have a distraction from the growing tension...
...Soon the media would be gone...
...His identity is expropriated as well...
...The title was deceptive...
...The condemned prisoners then go to their deaths compliantly, captives of the inexorable, irresistible momentum of the situation...
...It's all come together now...
...Officers are civil but cool...
...It's just something like "Get it over with...
...Humblest bunch of people I ever seen...
...He played a modest arrangement of rock music albums but refrained from dancing...
...After the test, the curtain was drawn...
...But the process has obvious psychological significance as well, adding greatly to the momentum of the execution...
...Cause they don't fight it...
...And that it's just the right thing to do...
...It seems paradoxical to think of the death watch officers as providing services to the condemned, but the logistics of the job make service a central obligation of the officers...
...Notorious English convicts of centuries past would throw farewell balls in prison on the eve of their executions...
...It had two parts...
...it is distorted...
...His body stiffened spasmodically, though only briefly...
...It wasn't a dark and stormy night...
...Relationships, such as they are, serve purely manipulative ends...
...Gilmore's final words, "Let's do it," seemed to invite the lethal hail of bullets from the firing squad...
...it is to keep tabs on the prisoner's state of mind, and to steer him away from subjects that might depress, anger, or otherwise upset him...
...To a man, the officers say (his is so...
...The strapped and masked figure sat before us, utterly alone, waiting to be killed...
...Such bravado is belied by their loss of appetite...
...Having taken life, they would savor a bit of life themselves...
...In this context, the phrase "done right" means that an execution should be a proper, professional, dignified undertaking...
...We could hear the normal sounds of prison life, including the occasional catcall and lewd comment hurled at uninvited guests like ourselves...
...And if everybody does what they were taught, or what they were trained to do, at the end the man would be put in the chair and everything would be complete...
...A thin swirl of smoke trailed away from his head and then dissipated quickly...
...Rather, he looked stricken and appeared to be in shock...
...This momentum is not lost on the condemned prisoner...
...The physician listened for a heartbeat...
...There was a moratorium on executions in the backed by the authority of the Supreme Court...
...The warden, speaking to the director, solemnly intoned: "Mr...
...This final period, the death watch, is generally undertaken by correctional officers who work as a team and report directly to the prison warden...
...You've gotta just be with him whether he wants it or not, and cater to his needs...
...The body remained taut, with the right foot raised slightly at the heel, seemingly frozen there...
...the protestors would disperse and head for their homes...
...Practice is meant to produce a confident group, capable of fast and accurate performance under pressure...
...The formal executioner concurred...
...This man has been sentenced to death in the courts...
...Everything is done by documentation...
...As one officer put it, "There's no struggle...
...He was, for example, allowed to hold a party the night before his execution, during which he was free to eat, drink, and make merry with his guests until the early morning hours...
...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 placed in the chair...
...All parties were quite solemn...
...Now physically "prepped," to quote one team member, the prisoner is placed in an empty tomblike cell, the death cell...
...And there's a certain amount of feeling, probably one to another, that they're part of that-that when they have to hang tough, they can do it, and they can do it right...
...The entire death watch team is assembled around him...
...Like a disciplined swarm, they enveloped him...
...Behind it, on the back wall, was an open panel full of coils and lights...
...As the execution team worked feverishly to secure the condemned man's body, the chaplain, who appeared to be upset, leaned over him and placed his forehead in contact with the prisoner's, whispering urgently...
...I've learned it's kind of a tense time...
...The cap and mask dominated his face...
...So I look at it like this: if it's gotta be done, at least it can be done in a humane way, if there is such a word for it....The only way it should be done, I feel, is the way we do it...
...This article is drawn from a Distinguished Faculty Lecture, given under the auspices of the university's senate last spring...
...A brief pause, then another minute of shock...
...Finally, the process culminates in the death watch, a twenty-four-hour period that ends when the prisoner has been executed...
...The critical juncture in this regard is the shaving of the man's head (including facial hair) and right leg...
...Generally speaking, as the execution moves closer, the mood becomes more somber and subdued...
...Immediately after the execution, I'm told, the body would be too hot to touch and would blister anyone who did...
...In the words of a prison administrator, "We had to be sure that we did it properly, professionally, and [that] we gave as much dignity to the person as we possibly could in the process....If you've gotta do it, it might just as well be done the way it's supposed to be done-without any sensation...
...So too, do the staff "just walk right on in there," following a routine they have come to know well...
...In the state under study, the death watch starts at 11 o'clock the night before the execution and ends at 11 o'clock the next night when the execution takes place...
...The point of these conversations is not merely to pass time...
...This team, comprised of nine seasoned officers of varying ranks, had carried out five electrocutions at the time I began my research...
...We picture hooded men hiding in the shadow of the gallows, or anonymous figures lurking out of sight behind electric chairs, gas chambers, firing blinds, or, more recently, hospital gur-neys...
...Eight o'clock is when we shave the man...
...The attitude of the officers is that the prisoners arrive as strangers and are easier to kill if they stay that way...
...The last officer mopped the prisoner's brow, then touched his hand in a gesture of farewell...
...In many states, it is a member of the death watch or execution team, acting under the warden's authority, who in fact plays the formal role of executioner...
...The next group would be led by the warden, and it would be coming for him...
...We wonder who would do such grisly work and how they sleep at night...
...Unrepentant and unafraid, Gilmore refused to appeal his conviction...
...Unlike their more taciturn and aloof colleagues on earlier shifts, these officers make a conscious effort to talk with the prisoner...
...Next the prisoners must box their meager worldly goods...
...water stains from persistent leaks were everywhere in evidence...
...These country boys, he assured me, could be counted on to do the job and do it well...
...Like others who have examined the death penalty, Mailer told us a great deal about the condemned but very little about the executioners...
...For some, the prisoner's image would linger for that night...
...Everyone on the team can do it, and nobody will tell you I did it...
...But that's my main post...
...What's the purpose of breaking it down into such small steps...
...This image of the executioner as a sinister and often solitary character is today misleading...
...Belittled by life and choking with rage, he was hungry to be noticed...
...I watch him real close...
...Broadly speaking, the job of the death watch officer, as one man put it, "is to sit and keep the inmate calm for the last twenty-four hours-and get the man ready to go...
...All that is left is the wait...
...Very small, yes...
...This is the law and he broke this law, and he has to suffer the consequences...
...It occurred to me that our arrival was a fateful reminder for the prisoner...
...For most condemned prisoners, however, numb resignation rather than peaceful acceptance is the norm...
...News accounts of such affairs sometimes included a commentary on the richness of the table and the quality of the dancing...
...For the record, Gilmore served Tang, Kool-Aid, cookies, and coffee, later supplemented by contraband pizza and an unidentified liquor...
...One of the death watch officers later volunteered that he shared this experience of staring blankly at the execution scene...
...He appeared to have given up on life before he died in the chair...
...The tone of the enterprise is set by the team leader, a man who takes a hard-boiled, no-nonsense approach to correctional work in general and death work in particular...
...In contrast to Mailer's account, the focus of the research I have conducted is on the executioners themselves as they carry out typical executions...
...The execution team worked with machine precision...
...Perhaps as a precaution, when the prisoner reached the chair he did not turn on his own but rather was turned, firmly but without malice, by the officers in his escort...
...It was commemorated in a best-selling tome by Norman Mailer, The Executioner's Song...
...And, at this stage, they're real humble...
...In the death house, he joined the humble bunch and kept to the executioner's schedule...
...Each of us signed a log, and was then led off to the witness area...
...That takes the load off this one individual [who pulls the switch...
...Prisoners can order pretty much what they want, but most eat little or nothing at all...
...Numbering between six and twelve for any given execution, the official witnesses are disinterested citizens in good standing drawn from a cross-section of the state's population...
...This is, as one officer said, "the real deal," and nobody misses its significance...
...Relations between the officers and their charges during the death watch can be quite intense...
...But no trouble came in the wake of the execution...
...Other than the chaplain's black religious garb, subdued grey pinstripes and Wand correctional uniforms prevailed...
...I found nothing in my research to dispute these claims...
...Indeed, if we dwell on Mailer's account, the executioner's story is not only unsung...
...I found that few members of the execution team support the death penalty outright or without reservation...
...Some 2,200 prisoners are presently confined on death rows across the nation...
...A profound absence of feeling would seem to capture the bureaucratic ideal embodied in the modern execution...
...Broadly speaking, the execution process as it is now practiced starts with the prisoner's confinement on death row, an oppressive prison-within-a-prison where the condemned are housed, sometimes for years, awaiting execution...
...He dared the state of Utah to take his life, and the media repeated the challenge until it became a taunt that may well have goaded officials to action...
...This taking of identity is indeed a collective process-the team makes a forceful "we," the prisoner their helpless object...
...And you'd be expected to do one thing and that's all you'd be expected to do...
...And one of the consequences is to put him to death...
...Then it would be closed to allow the officers to remove the body...
...These included the two men at his elbows, and four others who followed behind him...
...He didn't seem comforted...
...The ones now, we know what we're doing...
...They stay at a discrete distance, but it is obvious that they are there to maintain control should he resist in any way or make any untoward move...
...Said one man, My assignment is the leg piece...
...A failed suicide pact with his lover staged only days before the execution, using drugs ROBERT JOHNSON is professor of justice, law, and society at The American University, Washington, D.C...
...For executions are indeed meant to go Off Without any human feeling, without any sensation...
...As the team prepared the body for the morgue, the witnesses were led to the front door of the prison...
...This is impersonality at its worst, masquerading as concern for the strangers one hopes to execute with as little trouble as possible...
...I was struck by that simple movement then, and can't forget it even now...
...Executioners may be picked up under cover of darkness and some may still wear black hoods...
...Like many before him, the prisoner had threatened to stage a last stand...
...On the way, we passed a number of cell blocks...
...we all play 100 percent in it, too...
...The results of this phase of my research form the substance of this essay...
...The death-watch team is deployed during the last twenty-four hours before an execution...
...The nonchalant phrase, at once fatalistic and brazenly rebellious, became Gilmore's epitaph...
...They just walk right on in there...
...So people won't get confused...
...Hair is shaved to facilitate the electrocution...
...Prisoners are visibly saddened, even moved to tears, by this procedure, which at once summarizes their lives and highlights the imminence of death...
...The chaplain then withdrew at the warden's request, allowing the officers to affix the death mask...
...the just, but one can only marvel at such a thing, and perhaps envy such a man.s may or may not be the sleep;of...
...So it's broken down into very small steps...
...Befitting a celebrity, Gilmore was treated with unusual leniency by prison officials during his confinement on death row...
...The main significance of the clothes is symbolic: they mark the prisoner as a man who is ready for execution...
...Executions take place with increasing efficiency, and eventually occur with precision...
...The bottom part covered the chin and mouth, the top the eyes and lower forehead...
...Finally the electricity hit him...
...What is left of the man erodes gradually and, according to the officers, perceptibly over the remaining three hours before the execution...
...At this point, said one of the officers, "I really get into him...
...The hiatus lasted roughly a decade...
...More tests were performed behind the curtain...
...A leather mask was placed over his face...
...When you're executin' a person, killing a person-you call it killin', executin', whatever you want-the man dies anyway...
...To do otherwise, they maintain, would make it harder to execute condemned prisoners...
...This division of labor allows each man on the execution team to become a specialist, a technician with a sense of pride in his work...
...We entered a neighboring cell block and were admitted to a vestibule adjoining the death chamber...
...professional" means without personal feelings that intrude on the procedures in any way...
...At 10:58 the prisoner entered the death chamber...
...As a fellow administrator put it, "an execution is something [that] needs to be done and good people, dedicated people who believe in the American system, should do it...
...You've got to be ready- he's liable to do anything...
...He couldn't see us, but I'm quite certain he could hear us...
...I couldn't help but think they weren't alone in this...
...Then there might be tension and maybe even a modest disturbance on a prison tier or two...
...I was told he could not describe his life, from childhood on, without talking about confrontations in defense of a precarious sense of self-at home, in school, on the streets, in the prison yard...
...These relations are, nevertheless, utterly impersonal...
...On time...
...They are very much alone at the end...
...Gilmore's execution was quite atypical...
...Had the prisoner's mind been mercifully blank before the end...
...But today, executions are generally the work of a highly disciplined and efficient team of correctional officers...
...The process has been broken down into simple, discrete tasks and practiced repeatedly...
...When it was over, the body was flaccid and inert...
...Watching and being watched are central to this enterprise, and these are always engaging activities, particularly when the stakes are life and death...
...His last act was to swallow, nervously, pathetically, with his Adam's apple bobbing...
...Sociability, in other words, quite explicitly serves as a source of social control...
...Arms, legs, stomach, chest, and head were secured in a matter of seconds...
...His was an instance of state-assisted suicide accompanied by an element of romance and played out against a backdrop of media fanfare...
...It's not like you can just ignore him...
...I don't take it personally...
...Each person has one thing to do...
...But few convict luminaries are executed, and the dead man had not been one of them...
...Our rather ordinary cavalcade reached the prison but only after getting lost...
...Peeling paint hung from the ceiling and walls...
...This pride is shared by other correctional officials...
...Gilmore's execution marked the resurrection of the modern death penalty and was big news...
...The chair, a large, high-back solid oak structure with imposing black straps, dominated the death chamber...
...Such a reality most people can't understand...
...Once within the prison's walls, we were seques-tered for some two hours in a bare and almost shabby administrative conference room...
...There was nothing unusual or even memorable about any of this...
...My style," he says, "is this: if it's a job to do, get it done...
...The majority of these prisoners have lived under sentence of death for years, in some cases a decade or more, and are running out of legal appeals...
...But that is the past, the officer assured me...
...To be sure, a few states hire free-lance executioners and traffic in macabre theatrics...
...Perhaps the priest's urgent ministrations betrayed his doubts that the prisoner could hold himself together...
...Paradoxically, he had found his moment in the spotlight, but it was a dim and unflattering light cast before a small and unappreciative audience...
...In the language of the prison officials, "proper" refers to procedures that go off smoothly...
...Eleven in all, we included three newspaper and two television reporters, a state trooper, two police officers, a magistrate, a businessman, and myself...
...they keep an emotional distance from the men they are about to kill...
...Director, the court order has been fulfilled...
...The implication is not that the officers are incapable of performing multiple or complex tasks, but simply that it is more efficient to focus each officer's efforts on one easy task...
...To our left, around a corner some thirty feet away, the prisoner sat in the condemned cell...
...there are no farewell parties...
...During this fateful period, the prisoner is more like an object "without any sensation" than like a flesh-and-blood person on the threshold of death...
...A handful of high-level correctional officials were present in the death chamber, standing just outside the witness area...
...We train from different posts...
...Both the condemned and the executioners, it would seem, find a relief of sorts in mindless mechanical conformity to the modern execution drill...
...At least two officers would be with the prisoner at any given time during that period...
...We were picked up in the parking lot behind the main office of the corrections department...
...Thus surveillance is constant, and control, for all intents and purposes, is total...
...Were he not held securely by two officers, one at each elbow, he might have fallen...
...the law of the land...
...I can do any of them...
...You don't know what, what a man's gonna do," noted one officer...
...Later, I served as a behind-the-scenes observer during their seventh execution...
...Executioners are not a popular subject of social research, let alone conversation at the dinner table or cocktail party...
...It clinched his outlaw-hero image, and found its way onto tee shirts that confirmed his celebrity status...
...I had a few drinks myself that night with that same image for company...
...Food is the last thing they got on their minds...
...The people who come for them are the warden and the remainder of the death watch team, flanked by high-ranking correctional officials...
...When I would train you, maybe you'd buckle a belt, that might be all you'd have to do...
...In my experience executioners-not unlike Mailer himself-can be quite voluble, and sometimes quite moving, in expressing themselves...
...Disgruntled at this and increasingly anxious, we made small talk and drank coffee...
...His may or may not be the sleep;of...
...Arranging executions that occur "without any sensation" and that go"by the book" is no mean task, but it is a task that is undertaken in earnest by the execution team...
...It's done professionally...
...When we think of executioners at all, the imagery runs to individual men of disreputable, or at least questionable, character who work stealthily behind the scenes to carry out their grim labors...
...The man confessed ignorance on the most basic points...
...the just, but one can only marvel at such a thing, and perhaps envy such a man...
...Our escort officer offered a sad tribute to the prisoner: "The inmates, they didn't care about this guy...
...The priest might have been praying, but I had the impression he was consoling the man, perhaps assuring him that a forgiving God awaited him in the next life...
...Having seen executions close up, many of them have lingering doubts about the justice or wisdom of this sanction...
...But no one on the team, then or later, was haunted by the executed man's memory, nor would anyone grieve for him...
...The shaving procedure is quite public and intimidating...
...I served as an official witness at the execution of an inmate...
...The view of executions held by the execution team members parallels that of correctional administrators but is somewhat more restrained...
...And you keep records of whatever calls he makes...
...It is as if they can transcend the dehumanizing forces at work around them and go to their deaths in peace...
...Periodically, he gobbled drugs obligingly provided by the prison pharmacy...
...Though such concerns seemed remote that evening, I learned later that problems would surface for some of the officers...
...they showered as soon as they got home to wash off the feel and smell of death...
...The mask, made entirely of leather, appeared soiled and worn...
...The official view is that an execution is a job that has to be done, and done right...
...The officers of these death watch teams are our modem executioners...
...Listen to one man's observations: It's a job...
...The van sent for us was missing a few rows of seats so there wasn't enough room for all of us...
...I'm just carrying out a job, doing what I was asked to do...
...it's not no horseplaying...
...If he heard the chaplain, I doubt the man comprehended his message...
...she delivered to him in a visit marked by unusual intimacy, added a hint of melodrama to the proceedings...
Vol. 116 • January 1989 • No. 1
