Journey to the End of the Night

 

“The Air Conditioned Nightmare” 

I am somewhere between Death Row in Livingston and the Death House in Huntsville heading into a nightmare when I see it.   A mirage? A hallucination?  There’s a man struggling along the roadside with a huge wooden cross on his shoulder. He rises like a ghost out of the steaming mist following the thunderstorm. Holy Jesus! It’s not a mirage.

I rub my eyes.  He is still there.  I drive on.  I look away.  I look back.  He has faded into the plain. . .   Then, right then, like another signal from beyond some lunatic DJ immediately begins playing the Rolling Stone’s Sympathy for the Devil . . . Weird scenes.  It’s diabolical.  Don’t laugh.  You’d be nervous too.  I remove my sunglasses. Wipe my forehead. It’s nothing like the movies.  I’m shaking.

I am on my way to visit a prisoner on Death Row.

_____________________________________________________________

 

About an hour north of Houston, Huntsville is famous as the hometown of Sam Houston, the legendary founder of the Texas Republic.  Overlooking the interstate there’s a 50-meter statue of the general cut from gleaming white stone.   You see it for miles and miles. Once Huntsville was to be the state capital.  Now it’s famous for another reason.  If Detroit is the automobile capital of the world, Huntsville is the lethal injection capital of the world. A pleasant-looking town. A perfect Deep South town with a Death House attached.  Two blocks from the pretty courthouse is the prison.  They call it “The Walls.”  Inside The Walls, is the Death Chamber.  Three executions scheduled this week: Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.  Like clockwork.   Lethal injection a clean, sterile death.  Similar to how veterinarians destroy dogs.

It’s 2002. There are 3500 people on Death Row in the US and 455 in Texas.  While, statistics say that 75% of Americans favor the death penalty, it might be higher than that in Texas. When they execute a prisoner on death row, the death certificate says:  ‘homicide.’     

I have come a long way to visit Death Row inmate, Thomas Miller-El.  A black man from Houston convicted of killing a white man in Dallas.   Several thousand miles and a hundred phone calls.  That’s no lie. It takes a lot of work for a writer to get to Death Row. 

And one big mistake to live there.

 

“I’ll Take Care of the Bad-Asses Myself.”

Larry Fitzgerald welcomes me.  I saw him on a CNN documentary in May.  It is now the last week of June and I am in his office. He is the press spokesman for Death Row.  All roads lead to Larry Fitzgerald.  If you want to interview a prisoner, Larry’s help is absolutely necessary.  He decides.  Larry told me over the phone the week before: 

“Thomas will talk to anyone I ask him to.”  I hoped so.

 

There’s a quote on Larry’s bulletin board: “Oh Lord, save me from the do-gooders and I will take care of the bad-asses myself.”  Less than a hundred meters away is the Death Chamber.  A tall man with gray hair and a mustache.  He speaks slowly.  That’s fatigue.  His voice is deep and rough.  That is the cigarettes. He smokes Camels without filters.  He wears cowboy boots.  That’s Texas style. He has the manner of an undertaker.  That’s from watching men die.

He is 64.

“The execution tomorrow at six will be number 180 for me,” he says quietly.  Executions have changed over the years, he explains.   They used to be at midnight.  A ritual attended by drunken college students who raised hell outside the prison walls.  “Bars would close and people would come by to wait,” Larry says. In 1996 Texas changed the death hour from midnight to 18:00.  This works in favor of the prisoner:  it gives his attorneys an opportunity to make a last minute appeal.  “The more media and the more witnesses the better,” says Larry.

Later we stand outside in front of the prison and smoke cigarettes.  “That’s the entrance there.  You’ll see the witnesses go in tonight at six,” Larry says.

Does he ever get used to watching men die?

“It gets to me some times,” he says.   “If I knew the man well.  But I don’t lose sleep over it.  I never lose my perspective.  You have to trust the judicial process.”  He grinds his Camel out with his boot-heel.  He’s a likeable man. He’s a pro.  It’s just a job.

 

“Kill The Bastard!”

That afternoon it rained.  It rained hard.  Then the rain stopped.  It cleared. The sun came out.  Perfect weather to witness an execution.  Nothing missing but the rainbow.

Robert Coulson, unrepentant, dies today.  He was convicted of killing five members of his adopted family and then burning down the house.  Motive:  Inheritance.  Not a nice guy.     

Now I am standing beside the prison wall.  The street is blocked off with yellow crime scene tape.  A guard observes from the watchtower.  Officers stand guard.  I can see prisoners at the windows. A small group of protestors waits.  Some of these people have been witnessing executions for years.  An event that in Europe would attract thousands of onlookers, attracts a dozen here, two of them from Europe and one writer.

 Me.

There are two TV trucks from Houston.  Two perfectly dressed pretty young lady reporters strut back and forth looking self-important.  All is calm.

It really is a beautiful evening now.  Not too hot.  A touch of breeze.

Then I see the witnesses go in.  Five members of the media, five members of the victim’s family, five witnesses for Coulson.  There are eight small “holding cells” inside.  One contains a shower.  A folded towel.  Two bars of blue soap. A constant wet puddle at the drain.   A door leads to a small room, something like a hospital room.  In the center is a table. There is a small window for the witnesses to observe.  No red phone as in the movies. 

Soon they will see:  Coulson strapped to the “gurney” or killing table.  Coulson with needles inserted in his right and left arms.  Coulson’s final statement.  The warden taking off his glasses signaling the execution to begin.  Coulson falling asleep.  Sodium Thiopental.  Coulson’s breathing stopping. Pancuronium Bromide. Coulson’s heart stopping.  Potassium Chloride.  Coulson dead with his eyes open and staring.  Coulson’s witnesses wiping tears.  Coulson’s victim’s relatives tasting their revenge.  Coulson’s media witnesses taking notes and staring at the body.

 

Among the protestors are a German woman, Claudia, from Munich and an English woman, Heather, from London.  They are married to Death Row inmates.  Claudia is happy.  Her husband, Gary Etheridge has received a 30-day stay of execution.  He will not be killed on Thursday.  Then she starts to cry.  She knows.  For her husband the needle waits.  I wonder about her and Heather.  What are they thinking?  Green card love?  No.  They both still live in Europe.  Something else.  Something I cannot understand.  Something perhaps even they don’t understand.

There is a man in a straw hat.  His name is Dennis Longmire.  The inmates, who can see this corner from the prison window call him “the man with the candle.”  He has witnessed 250 executions from that corner, always holding a candle.  He is a criminology professor at Sam Houston State, the local university.  It has the largest criminology department in the US.  It also has 13,000 students.

Not one of them is here. 

“Do you ever get used to it?” I ask Dennis. 

“No,” he said.  “Never.”   

 We wait.

At six o’clock a man drives by in a pick-up truck and screams:  “Kill the bastard!”  Then he steps on the gas, screeching his tires like a kid showing off on Saturday night.   Soon Larry takes the witnesses and the media in.   I wonder how those fragrant lady TV reporters will react.  Will they sweat?  Will their thighs twitch? 

We watch the big clock over the prison entrance. . . a whistle blows.

At 6:20 they all come out.

Larry Fitzgerald reads a statement.

“At 6:01 he was taken from the holding cell.

At 6:03 he was strapped to the “gurney”.

At 6:04 the saline solution began.

At 6:07 he gave his last statement.

At 6:11 the solution began.

At 6:16 he was pronounced dead.

Exhausted, I drive back to my room.  I open a bottle of  Johnnie Walker.  I switch on the TV.  The movie is Clint Eastwood’s The Unforgiven.  There is that scene at the end when he stands over the dying Gene Hackman.

Hackman:  “I don’t deserve to die.  I was building a house.”

Eastwood:  “Deserve has nothing to do with it.”   

I turn off the TV and watch the walls. 

“In God We Trust”

It is 9:00 o’clock in the morning and I am standing in the prison graveyard with the Reverend Carroll Pickett. 

This 70-year old minister has seen it all.   He recently published a well-known book called “Within These Walls:  Memoirs of a Death House Chaplain.”  During the time he served as chaplain for the Texas prison system, he ministered to ninety-five men who were put to death by lethal injection.  He stood by them as they were strapped to a gurney.  He watched as the needles that would pump lethal chemicals into their veins were inserted.  He heard their final words and watched as they took their last breaths.  “I was the last friendly face they saw,” he says quietly standing next to the grave of Cowboy who was executed in the early 90s. 

 

“I spent the final hours of their lives with them, hearing stories of troubled childhood and crimes committed, seeing the anger and arrogance, the sorrow and remorse and finally the resolution and the fear on their faces. . . Often I would conduct their graveside services in this cemetery the following day, generally only accompanied by the warden and the inmates assigned to dig their graves.”

Like many Texans he was raised in an atmosphere, which claimed the only real justice was an eye for an eye.   “I was wrong,” he says.  “Cold-hearted vengeance is wrong.  All the death penalty does is create another set of victims, the family of the executed prisoner.  It does not stop murder.  In 1982 we had 100 men on death row.  Now we have nearly 500,”  he says.  There are many more murderers in the general prison population than on Death Row.

We are standing in bright sunshine in a sea of white crosses on a sloping hillside about half a mile from the prison walls. 

 “CODA:  Foreign Citizens on Death Row”

There is something horribly wrong.  You are living the ultimate nightmare.  You are a foreigner in the United States.  You have spent 37 months on Death Row in Florida for a double murder you did not commit.  There is no physical evidence linking you to the murder.

Hard to believe?  That is what happened to thirty-two year-old Joaquin Martinez, a cause celebre in his native Spain and across Europe, who was acquitted in a second trial in 2000, when a judge ruled that an “incriminating” tape was inaudible and that there were improper statements at the original trial by a police detective who said:  “We know he did it. That’s how we know.”  

Pope John Paul II has consistently opposed the death penalty, speaking out personally in the Martinez case along with the Spanish Prime Minister who said:  “I have always been against the death penalty and always will be.”  All EU countries ban the death penalty. President Bush and his brother, Jeb, governor of Florida, both favor the death penalty.  It is political suicide not to.  

As of May 2001 there were 121 foreigners on Death Row in the US from 33 different countries, 17 executed since 1976 (Amnesty International).   There are three Germans.  A Spaniard. A Croatian. A Scot called Kenneth Richey, who has is a cause celebre of the Pope and Susan Sarandon.  There is a Pole, but mostly there are Latin Americans:  Mexicans, Central and South Americans.  There is the case of Javier Suarez Menendez, sentenced to die in Huntsville in August 2002 for the admitted killing of an undercover drug agent, who he thought was a drug dealer.  He had no prior criminal record.  He was 19 at the time of the murder.  

According to Amnesty International’s specialist, Mark Warren, few of any of these men were ever made aware of their right to contact their embassies.

He says: “Most people don’t look at the death penalty very closely.  They think it is reserved for the worst of the worst.  But when you look closely you see that who gets the death penalty is very closely related to where the crime occurred than the nature of the crime. In this sense, it is a very unfair punishment.”

Then there is the case of British businessman, Krishna Maharaj.  He was on Florida’s Death Row for fifteen years for a double murder he says he did not commit.  In March 2002 a new jury imposed a sentence of life imprisonment.   His eight alibi witnesses never testified.

His lawyer Clive Stafford-Smith, well-known for being anti-death penalty, says:  “I’ve never been more certain that someone is innocent.  It’s a total scandal and miscarriage of justice.”

Mahraj himself recently said in The Guardian: “Quite frankly, I would rather die.  Go to the electric chair called Old Sparky over here, than spend the rest of my days in prison”-- a statement echoed by many Death Row prisoners.  They fear life imprisonment more than Death.

 

It seems reasonable to say that most Americans would be totally appalled if a US citizen in a foreign country were charged with, convicted and executed for a capital crime without being advised of the right to contact the US Embassy for help. The Vienna Convention of which the US is a signatory guarantees these rights.   This brings to mind one of the most famous US capital cases.  It concerns a Polish man.  His name is Gregory Madej and he is on Death Row in Illinois. He was on Death Row in Illinois for 21 years.  Born in Kielce in 1959, he immigrated with his parents to Chicago when he was a small child.  He never became a US citizen. 

Convicted of the murder and sexual assault of 38-year old Barbara Doyle in 1981, his case is one of the most interesting in capital punishment law.    The details of the crime are shadowy.  According to his new Chicago attorney, Amarjeet Bhachu: “Gregory had a bad lawyer.  He got a bad  trial.  This case is a textbook example of why the death penalty does not work properly.”

Amnesty International says Gregory was not given the right to contact his consulate when arrested—a violation of the Vienna Convention.  The Polish consulate became involved in the case -- only in 1999 -- after learning of Gregory’s citizenship.  Meanwhile DNA analysis unavailable in 1981 has shown that one of the serious convictions, deviant sexual assault, was false.  This charge may well have been the final straw, for which Gregory received the death penalty.

Through advice of his attorney Gregory waived his right to a jury trial, despite the one juror rule which says one juror’s dissent prevents a capital sentence.  The trial judge sentenced Gregory to death after only a few minutes.  Police radio tapes, mentioning another man, who was seen with Gregory just before he was caught, magically disappeared.  Gregory maintains that he killed Barbara Doyle in self-defense.   Her husband, who may have been the mystery man with Gregory, has signed an affidavit saying he does not think Gregory should be executed.  Meanwhile, Gregory waits on Death Row.  It is his home.  He has spent his entire adult life there.

 

Germany sued the US government in the International Court of Justice over the Arizona execution of two Germans, the Le Grand brothers in 1999.  By some strange working of synchronicity there is another pair of German brothers, Rudi and Michael Apelt, who have been on Arizona’s Death Row since 1991.  There is strong evidence to suggest that they are both mentally retarded.  Dieter Riechmann, another German, imprisoned in Florida, is a famous case in Germany, where many officials believe he is innocent.

Roughly sixty percent of those surveyed nationwide favor capital punishment.  It may be higher in Texas. .  .  My own personal survey of about 50 people in Huntsville and on the steps of the US Supreme Court in Washington DC, ran to about 75 percent in favor.

“Dead Man Talking”

It is 13:00 hours.  I drive onto the grounds of the Polunsky unit, which houses Death Row.  A match in the forest would burn the countryside down.  A prison van passes.  Inside is Jeffrey Lynn Williams.  Admitted child rapist. He killed her mother. An evil man, undoubtedly. He will be executed in five hours.  Larry is waiting for me.  Standing there smoking a Camel and talking to a Texas Ranger.  There is the prison:  huge and white.  Gleaming in the sun. Surrounded by a high chain link fence topped with barbed wire.  We go inside.

Thomas Miller-El appears in chains. Two guards remove them.  He is very tall.  He looks like an NBA player.  He sits down.  He smiles.  There is a glass window with wire mesh between us. I take the phone.  So does he.  Just like in the movies.  But this is the only part that is like the movies.

Thomas has had quite a few execution dates.  The latest was last winter.  At the last moment the US Supreme Court stopped his execution.  The grounds:  racial discrimination in jury selection.   The case is still being decided. His wife, Dorothy, convicted of the same crime was released from prison in 1991.  It’s a terrible story. 

Thomas is fifty years old.  He has been on Death Row for 18 years, convicted of killing one man and paralyzing another in a Holiday Inn robbery in Dallas.  The police shot and nearly killed him when they grabbed him.   He was unarmed.   He claims he is innocent.  He claims he was in Houston when the murder happened.  He has witnesses.  But that is another question. Thomas’s lawyer is fighting for a retrial.  That’s why Thomas is still alive.  It’s a famous case.  Despite what Thomas says, too much evidence seems to support his conviction.  It’s still a moot point. Do a “google” search with his name and you get a hundred entries.  

“I want you to know that I have come a long way to see you.  I want to send greetings from your wife,”  I say.

“Thanks for coming.  Thank you.” he says.

How does that day’s execution affect him?

“Every time they execute someone you die inside,” he says.  “When I first came to death row 20 people had been executed.  Now it’s over 200.  .  . We have a common bond.  We are all in a helpless situation.”

His lawyer asked me not to discuss the facts of the case.  So I don’t. 

Did he get a fair trial?

“If you fit the profile in this country, a black man don’t have a chance,” says Thomas.  He doesn’t look like a killer.  And yet: it’s his eyes. He looks like one of those stained-glass saints from church windows.   It’s the eyes most of all.  Suffering conceived out of solitude and fatigue.

What is it like waiting to die?

“Once they give you an execution date, waiting becomes a nightmare,” says Thomas.  He doesn’t whine.  He doesn’t complain.  He simply speaks.

“I’ve had ten dates.  One or two is enough for anyone to go through. . . . I came as close as an hour and forty minutes,” he says.  Back in the mid-90s, he went to the Death House several times to prepare to die.  Each time he got a stay of execution.  He has died a dozen times in his own mind:  one for each of the apostles . . .   

His hair is patched with gray.  He is pale.  Death Row pale.  We talk about prison routine.  He tells me his philosophy of life.  “We got to love each other, man.  We got to learn to forgive.” He is not bitter.  He is beyond that.  He is a voice from beyond the grave.   

“Waiting to die is awful.  I’m in hell now . . . I can’t go there.  I got to go to heaven, ”he says. 

What does he think about?

‘I study the law.  I read books.  I write.  I think.  But I don’t dream.  I haven’t dreamed . . . I can’t recall a dream.  I don’t know if I can . . . dream . . . anymore.  They have my dreams in their hands.”

He gets an hour of exercise a day, the rest of the time he is in his 5 square meter cell. 

Thomas is dedicated to bringing people together on the outside and the inside.  “It’s a beautiful world. . . It’s a journey,” he says.  “I’m on a journey.”

I was the only media visitor on media day in a week when three had been scheduled to die.  I put my hand on the glass between us.  Thomas smiles and puts his hand up on the window against mine.  I look at him and try to place the events of that night 18 years ago, the events that put him here. 

Is he guilty?  The evidence says yes.  Is reformed?  The evidence says yes. 

It is hard to look into the eyes of a man on Death Row.  It is hard.  The fear gets into you.  It’s in the air.  You breathe it in.  You are not the same again.

“Time’s up,” Larry says.

“You are a human being,” Thomas said.  “I can see it in your eyes. Take care of yourself.”

I ask him if he has any messages. 

“Can you call my wife and ask her to call my lawyer. And tell her I can’t write for a while.  They have restricted my privileges.”

‘Ok,” I promise. 

On a pleasant June afternoon, the next execution is three hours away.

 

 

“Post Mortem”  

“Some people don’t deserve to live,” people say.  But how can capital punishment be right if one innocent man is put to death?  Carroll Pickett tells of a case where a man who was known to be innocent was put to death because he had got a “fair trial.” According to Amnesty International, 101 innocent men have been released from Death Row since 1971.  101.  Like Joaquin Martinez. 

The Death Penalty is now in the hands of the US Supreme Court, which ruled in June 2002 -- while I was actually in Huntsville-- that mentally handicapped cannot be executed and that only juries, not judges, can order the death penalty.

 The Death Penalty and the War Against Terrorism are the two most important issues in America right now.  Capital Punishment remains a mass spectacle, even if the actual spectators are fewer and more select.  In Texas and Florida, particularly, it is a part of life.  The question remains: is it right for the state to murder the murderer? 

 Perhaps the real answer lies in the eyes of the victim’s families.  In the eyes of the condemned.  In Larry Fitzgerald’s eyes.  In Carroll Pickett’s.  In the eyes of  Thomas Miller-El.  The answer is to be found in the eyes of those who  see the prisoner’s last moments.  The Witnesses.  They will never forget those eyes.  So many pairs of eyes.

“Did you find out what you needed?”  Larry Fitzgerald asked me later.

“Yeah,” I said. “Nobody understands murder.”

 

Note:  Thomas Miller-El’s death sentence was under review by the United States Supreme Court for racial discrimination in the jury selection.  In October 2003 he was granted a new trial.

Gregory Madej’s death sentence was commuted by the governor of Illinois in 2003 in a general amnesty for death row prisoners.

For information about foreigners on death row visit www.deathpenaltyinfo.org

 

Texas Death Row Facts

Texas leads the nation in executions since 1976.

Cost per day per offender:  $53

Cost of lethal injection:  $86

Average age:  39

Average time on Death Row:  10.58 years

Execution History:  1819-1923  hanging

1923-1964 electric chair

1965-1982 moratorium on execution

1982-2002 lethal injection

Last Meal:  the last meal is provided at the inmate’s request.  They do not get exactly what they want.  The meal is prepared from what is available in the prison kitchen and is as close an approximation as possible to the inmate’s choice.  Stanley Baker who was executed in May 2002 requested:  Two steaks, one turkey breast, twelve pieces of bacon,  two large hamburgers, two large baked potatoes with sour cream and butter, a chef salad, two pieces of corn, one pint of ice cream and four cokes. 

Napoleon Beasley who was executed in the same month requested nothing.    

 US Death Row Facts

Prisoners on Death Row:  3527

States with Death Penalty:  38 including New York, California, Florida, Illinois

Methods of Execution:  Lethal Injection, Electrocution, Gas, Hanging, Firing Squad