Voices from Solitary: “Death Row Diary” of Florida Man Scheduled to Die Tonight

June 12, 2013 By 2 Comments

fl chamberWilliam Van Poyck, 58 years old and on death row at the Florida State Prison in Starke, is scheduled to die at the hands of the state tonight at 7 pm. In 1987 he was convicted of murdering prison guard Fred Griffis in a failed jailbreak attempt. Poyck has spent nearly 26 years on death row in solitary confinement. He has written to his sister about his life in prison, and in recent years she has published his letters to a blog called Death Row Diary.  In these letters, Poyck writes about everything from the novels and history books he is reading and shows he has watched on PBS to the state of the world and his own philosophy of life–punctuated by news of the deaths of those around him, from illness, suicide, and execution. He also comments on the bill recently passed by the Florida legislature that will accelerate the schedule of executions in Florida. The excerpts selected here focus on the inhumane treatment he and other individuals on death row endure as they move ever closer to their own finalities. His last entry was written on May 28, when he had “15 days left to live.”  –Abby Taskier

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January 4, 2012

Well, another year is upon us. I feel like I ought to have something profound to say but all I can think of is the too many – over 40 – years I’ve spent sitting in a cell or prison dormitory watching another new year slide into my life. New Year’s is supposed to represent hope and potential but it’s hard to convince yourself that hope and potential abounds when you’re doing hard time! Anyway, 2012 is the supposed end of the world according to the Mayan calendar…I don’t put too much stock in apocalyptic predictions; humans have been making them since the dawn of time, after all, without any success, and I’m an optimist by nature. But I confess that as I survey the world around me and what we humans are doing to planet earth it is increasingly difficult to envision a good ending…

The search team came and tore up my cell last week; it was a surgical strike (they came for me alone) and I was later told that “someone” wrote a snitch kite on me claiming (falsely) I had a weapon in my cell. I’m fairly certain it was someone trying to get a DR (disciplinary report) dismissed by dropping a dime on me on the hope they’d shake me down and find something, any kind of contraband, and the rat would then get credit for it. But I had no contraband so the snitch struck out. If the administration had any integrity they’d write the rat a DR for “lying to staff.” I spent several hours putting my cell back in order; it looked like a hurricane came through, all my property scattered everywhere. This is the kind of bullshit you have to put up with in prison; it’s the nature of the beast…

I just learned that Governor Scott has signed another death warrant and someone is on death watch on the bottom floor of Q-wing. Scott didn’t waste any time after the holidays; he seems determined to execute a record number of people at the pace he is setting…This is a depressing turn of events, a lousy way to begin the new year, at least from my perspective. The execution, when it occurs, will undoubtedly please some people, so it’s all a matter of perspective…

February 9, 2012

Yesterday the prison was locked down all day for the standard “mock execution”, the practice run which occurs a week prior to the actual premeditated killing. For the mock execution they lock down the joint, bring in an array of big wigs, and go through a dry run to make sure the death machine is in working order, everyone on their toes. The big wigs are just voyeurs, here to vicariously kill someone while allowing themselves the bare moral cover of not actually pushing the knife between the ribs. Their minions do the actual dirty deed while they can go home with technically clean hands. These mock executions are as depressing as the real thing, in the sense that it’s dispiriting to watch an entire organization (a prison, with all its constituent parts) so seriously dedicate their time and energies to practice killing a fellow human being, as if this is a good and natural thing to do. It takes some peculiar mental (not to mention moral) gymnastics to justify this to oneself, but we humans have proven ourselves immensely adept at self-delusion and hypocrisy, especially when we bring religion into the equation. We are really, really good at killing others in the name of God. We are a strange species, aren’t we?

February 25, 2012

Robert Waterhouse was scheduled for execution at 6:00pm this evening. In accordance with the established execution protocol he was strapped to the gurney and the needles were inserted into each arm about 45 minutes prior to his appointed time. Just before 6:00, however, he received a 45-minute stay which morphed into an almost 3-hour endurance test as he remained on the gurney as the seconds, minutes and then hours slid by at an excruciatingly slow pace, waiting for someone to tell him if hope was at hand, if he would live or die. Just before 9:00 he received his answer, the plungers were depressed, the syringes emptied and he was summarily killed. Here on the row we can discern the approximate time of death when we see the old white Cadillac hearse trundle in through the back sally port gate to pick up the body, the same familiar 1960′s era hearse I’ve watched for almost 40 years, coming in to retrieve the bodies of murdered prisoners, which used to happen on a regular basis back when I was in open population.  I’ve seen a lot of guys, both friends and foes, carted off in that old hearse. Anyway, pause for a moment to imagine being on that gurney for over three hours, the needles in your arms.  You’ve already come to terms with your imminent death, you are reconciled with the reality that this is it, this is how you will die, that there will be no reprieve.  Then, at the last moment, a cruel trick, you’re given that slim hope, which you instinctively grasp.  Some court, somewhere, has given you a temporary stay.  You stare at the ceiling while the clock on the wall ticks away.  You are totally alone, not a friendly soul in sight, surrounded by grim-faced men who are determined to kill you.  Your heart pounds, your body feels electrified and every second seems like an eternity as a Kaleidoscope of wild thoughts crash around franticly in your compressed mind. After 3 hours you are drained, exhausted, terrorized, and then the phone on the wall rings and you’re told it’s time to die…

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Filed Under: death row, Florida, legislation, politics of punishment, prison health care, psychological effects, solitary confinement, suicide Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Connecticut Votes to Replace the Death Penalty with Life in Solitary Confinement

April 12, 2012 By 1 Comment

Late yesterday, the Connecticut Assembly passed legislation to bring an end to the state’s future use of the death penalty. The governor has promised to sign the legislation, making Connecticut the 17th state to repeal capital punishment.

This is, of course, a significant victory for death penalty opponents. But the legislation has two troubling components. The first is the fact that it will not apply to the 11 men currently on death row. The second is an amendment added last week to the legislation in the Connecticut Senate, where it faced a steeper hurdle. As reported by the Connecticut website The Day:

The House bill is nearly identical to the Senate bill passed last week. It creates new imprisonment standards for future Class A felony murderers convicted of “murder with special circumstances,” what is currently known as a capital offense.

Under the bill, those convicted must be housed separately from other inmates, subjected to twice-weekly cell searches and must change their cells every three months. They would get no more than two hours a day outside their cells and would be allowed only “non-contact” visitation privileges.

The amendment–which can be read in full here–is meant to ensure that prisoners who might previously have received the death penalty will serve life without parole in 22-hour-a-day solitary confinement, in conditions that mimic death row. In pledging to sign the bill, Governor Dannel Malloy stated: “Going forward, we will have a system that allows us to put these people away for life, in living conditions none of us would want to experience…Let’s throw away the key and have them spend the rest of their natural lives in jail.”

Even for steadfast opponents of long-term solitary confinement, it would be difficult to argue that this is not the lesser of two evils. But it is an evil nonetheless, in that it replaces death penalty with a lifetime in conditions that are widely considered to constitute torture. It also risks spreading the use of life in solitary confinement beyond what would originally have been capital cases–which is effectively what happened with life without parole.

Filed Under: death row, politics of punishment, solitary confinement, torture Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Voices from Solitary: Hank Skinner’s Dispatches from Texas Death Row

November 7, 2011 By 3 Comments

Today, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted a stay of execution to Hank Skinner, to allow for the testing of DNA evidence which Skinner says could cast doubt on his guilt. Skinner was scheduled to be executed two days from now, on November 9. In March of last year, Skinner came within a half-hour of execution before receiving a stay from the U.S. Supreme Court. (Read more about the case here and here.)

Since 2008, Hank Skinner has been writing dispatches from his cell on Texas’s death row in the Allan B. Polunsky Unit, under the heading “Hell Hole News.” These dispatches appear on the website maintained by Skinner’s supporters. Many of them deal with his case, but several describe conditions on death row, where prisoners live in near-complete isolation while awaiting execution–a condition some human rights and civil rights groups have identified as torture. Excerpts from three of Skinner’s dispatches appear below–including one describing what were to be his final hours last year. To read all of Skinner’s “Hell Hole News,” go to this web page and scroll to the bottom.

October 27, 2008

…I’ve lost every friend I ever had here. Texas killed them one by one. They leave here. They never come back. I read in the paper what they said and how they died, how many minutes it took them to die, what colors they turn as the chemicals course through their veins, how they strangle, gurgle, rasp, snore and die, die, die. So, trust me, I’ve got experience here with death. Thirteen (13) years of it. 322 executions worth. For all the terrible things some may have done, I’ve never encountered any of the “monsters”, “demons”, “sociopaths”, “super predators” or “deranged killers” the D. A.’s and news media are always talking about. I’ve seen only human beings some wretched, true but mostly just twisted and broken by dismal lives and upbringings they themselves had little or no control over. I’m not seeking to lessen their responsibility, I’m just saying, it could happen to anyone and, it has.

Acceptance and realization of the enormity of the deed of causing death has affected so many so profoundly that we’ve had quite a few suicide attempts and completions. Others drop their appeals, but that’s suicide too, in my eyes. The most recent was Michael Rodriquez of the Texas. The isolation, desperation, sensory deprivation and the utter despair of realizing the enormity of what he’d done drove him to conclude that he’d rather die than continue to live in this misery, this man made purgatory called Texas death row. The media describes our conditions as “stark”. Ha/ha! What a malicious understatement. Look at the Walnut street prison “experiment” mentioned in the case of in re Medley, 1890 U. S. Supreme Court. This is a form of the “Pennsylvania System” which was instituted by the Quakers in mid 1800’s. It was known that as now, over 154 years later, that THESE CONDITIONS DRIVE MEN MAD, as Charles Dickens stated upon his visit to one of those SHU’s:

“The dull repose and quiet that prevails is awful. In his shroud [of a cell] is lowered an emblem of the curtain dropped between him and society, the living world; he is led to the cell from which he never again comes forth until his whole term of imprisonment has expired… He is a man buried alive; to be dug out in the slow round of years and in the meantime is dead to everything but torturing anxieties and horrible despair”.

So, with all that said, you know I’m qualified as a lay expert on these subjects. I’ve been all over death row in my years here and talked to countless men, some guilty, some innocent, some in the murky gray areas in between. I can tell you that when a man lays dying on that gurney and says his is so sorry for what he did, he really means it and, when he sheds a tear, it is for the victims, not for himself. We’re scared of death, as everyone is; but most of us who have any sense left view death as an escape from this torment. Yes, dying is bad. But it’ll be over in a few minutes and thus it’s the easy part when compared to all we’ve suffered and seen here.

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Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, due process, psychological effects, solitary confinement, suicide, supermax prisons, Texas, torture, Voices from Solitary Tagged With: , , ,

Texas Prepares to Execute Hank Skinner Without Testing DNA

November 7, 2011 By 1 Comment

Update: On Monday afternoon, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stayed Skinner’s execution to review how changes in the state law on DNA testing requests affect cases like Skinner’s.

Our piece on Hank Skinner, who is scheduled to be executed in Texas this Wednesday, appears today over at Mother Jones.

“Any time DNA evidence can be used in its context and be relevant as to the guilt or innocence of a person on death row, we need to use it.” This was the statement of none other than George W. Bush, Texas governor. He said it in June 2000, about granting a last-minute reprieve to death row inmate Ricky McGinn, who was seeking DNA testing of forensic evidence he claimed might exonerate him. (It didn’t, as it turned out, and McGinn was executed several months later.) Bush was running for president when he made his decision to delay the execution to allow for DNA testing.

Today, Texas governor and presidential candidate Rick Perry faces an almost identical decision with the case of Hank Skinner—the main difference being a greater likelihood that Skinner might actually be innocent of the crime for which he has been sentenced to death. Skinner, who is scheduled for execution on November 9, was convicted in 1995 of killing his girlfriend, Twila Busby, and her two adult sons. He insists he was passed out from intoxication at the time, and that the real perpetrator was probably Busby’s uncle (who has since died). At the time of his trial, Skinner’s lawyers chose not to have certain items tested, they said, because his DNA would likely be everywhere in the home he shared with the victim. But since 2000, Skinner has been arguing that there’s a chance DNA evidence could exonerate him.

The odds of getting that chance from the Perry administration look  slim. On Skinner’s last scheduled execution date, in March 2010, it was  the US Supreme Court, not Perry, who issued an eleventh-hour stay…

Read the rest on MotherJones.com.

We will also be publishing excerpts from some of Hank Skinner’s own writings over the past several years. Check back later today for these dispatches from Texas death row.

Filed Under: death row, due process, Texas Tagged With: , , , , ,

Easter As a Story of Criminal Injustice

April 25, 2011 By 3 Comments

We missed this post yesterday, but it’s too good to pass up so we’re sharing it a day late. This is from Scott Henson’s Grits for Breakfast, which provides the blogosphere’s best coverage of the Texas criminal justice system. 

Easter is strikingly filled with criminal justice themes, isn’t it? The Christian religion was essentially founded on a repudiation of Roman capital punishment. Easter celebrates the sinless Man-God killed for His beliefs who triumphed over the grave, mooting, even while respecting to the end, the earth-bound laws that condemned Him. Jesus, a blameless man executed, is the all-time poster child for the innocence movement. Corrupt and biased prosecutors prevailed in His case because of a judge’s personal indifference and deference to the mob. Christ’s betrayal by Judas was the archetype cementing into Christian values a lingering distrust of snitches and informants. Romans accused the disciples of grave robbery. St. Peter committed assault with a deadly weapon in the Garden of Gethsemane then thrice lied about his identity to avoid arrest. And taken as a whole, the passion story documents Jesus’ arrest, trial, and execution all taking place in an incredibly short span, as though criminal convictions could be obtained as quickly in real life as on an episode of Law & Order.

Christmas is a story about family. Easter is a story about a wrongful criminal conviction, the misapplication of the death penalty, the overweening power of the state, and the irrepressible urge of humanity to resist it.

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Filed Under: death row, due process, political prisoners Tagged With: , , , ,

Voices from Solitary: Lane Nelson on Angola’s Death Row

March 5, 2011 By 4 Comments

While serving time at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, Lane Nelson spent 18 years as a staff writer and later managing editor for the nation’s most renowned prison magazine, The Angolite. He covered a wide range of subjects, including Angola’s longtermer population and hepatitis-C behind bars, and he interviewed and profiled several men just days before their executions. Nelson himself spent two years on death row–at one point coming within five days of being executed–before a judge overturned his death sentence citing inadequate counsel. Lane Nelson received a pardon based on good behavior and his volunteer work at Angola. In January he rejoined the free world after 29 1/2 years behind bars. Nelson has opened his own business, Capital Punishment Consulting Agency (CPCA), offering services that extend outside the area of the death penalty to general matters concerning criminal justice and prison life, and he is available for speaking engagements.

In this memoir piece, titled “A Death Row Experience: The Summer of 1987,” Nelson writes about a fateful period on Angola’s death row when men were being executed just days apart. At the time, Louisiana’s death sentences were carried out in the electric chair.

Just before they moved Jimmy to the death house, he took his final shower. It was early in the morning and the 13-cell tier was silent.  I lay on my bunk listening to the running water and wondered, “How hard is this last shower for Jimmy?  Is he thinking, ‘This is the last shower I will ever take?’”

            Now every time I take a shower, the fresh memory of Jimmy haunts me.  “Soon, in this very spot, I will take my last shower.  Will I soak in it, uselessly stalling for time?  Will I cry in it?”

            I now pause in the middle of writing letters and think, “In my last hours will I write all the letters I need to write?  Will I forget to tell someone good-bye?  In the middle of writing someone I love, will the minutes tick away and the guards come for me before I finish?”

 •

Louisiana.  The summer of 1987.  Four men executed in the last nine days.  Two of the men I knew well.  One praised God with his last words.  The other said simply, “I think I’d rather be fishing.”  Two different personalities.  Two different spiritual beliefs.  Two friends gone.  It has left me devastated.  I sit on death row and wait.

            My wait so far has been five years, six months, and I have remained calm through the course of my appeals.  But with my appeals nearing their end and with this sudden string of executions, a storm of fear and questions have pushed their way to the surface.  The finality of death now overwhelms me.

            The night Jimmy was executed I laid in my bunk and prayed for him, and counted down the minutes with him.  Emotionally exhausted, I dozed off and woke up 25-minutes later drenched in sweat and gritting my teeth.  I felt empty inside.  My watch read 12:15 a.m.

            Later that morning as news report confirmed Jimmy was executed at 12:14 a.m.  It was at that moment I began to drown in tortuous questions.  Was I overreacting?  Was I weaker than the other ten men left on my tier?

            Lifting my head out of my hands, I noticed John standing in front of my cell.  His hands trembling, his voice quivering.  “I’ll fight the guards when my time comes,” he said.  His voice did not ring with anger, but cracked with hopelessness.

            In the initial stages of his appeals, John has never doubted he would win a new trial, until now.  And so I discover I am not alone to my reaction to the Executioner.  Like my cell neighbor, I have my own doubts and fears.  I find myself rehearsing day and night the orderly and sterile procedure planned for my death:  the last shower, the handshakes and good-byes, the heavily escorted walk in tight shackles to the death house, the 12-hour excruciating wait in the death cell, someone shaving my head and legs and afterwards having to wear a diaper.  Then, the last short walk to take my seat in the chair that will burn me into eternity.

            I also think about giving my last statement, wondering what my final words should be.  It is important to me that I say something spiritual, and perhaps something concerning the injustice of capital punishment.  I will be nervous for sure staring out at those who witness my execution, most there because they want to see me die.  Will I choke on my words and end up saying nothing?  Worse, will I ramble on nervously, making no sense to anyone?  Or while standing in front of the witnesses, the media vultures, will I decide to say nothing at all, thinking, “What’s the use, what worth will my words have?  And nothing I say now is going to stop them from killing me.”

           There is no evading the thoughts of the execution itself.  Like a kid forcing himself to watch a scary part of a horror movie, I find myself forcing thoughts over the execution.  Recently, I dug down to the bottom of my locker box and pulled up a book I had read a few years earlier.  The Brethren:  Inside the Supreme Court.  Opening it to page 225, one paragraph is enough:

           When the executioner throws the switch that send the electric current through the body, the prisoner cringes from torture, his flesh swells and his skin stretches to the point of breaking.  He defecates, he urinates, his tongue swells and his eyeballs pop out.  In some cases I have been told the eyeballs rest on the cheeks of the condemned.  His flesh is so hot it cannot be touched by the human hand.

            I close the book and shudder.  “That’s what it will be like.”

            Will the pain of 2,400 volts be excruciating?  Because I have kept up a strenuous exercise routine the past six years, will the reflex of my physically fit body fight against the surging electricity and prolong the pain?  How many times will they throw the switch before they decide I’m dead and gone?  Will I catch fire?  Will I emit a terrible odor?

            More disturbing are the spiritual questions that plague me.  Does God really exist?  If so, will He accept me?  Is there a heaven and hell and where will I go?  Is there something I am missing, something I don’t understand?

             For six years I have held faith in God and never doubted my sins have been forgiven.  But at this moment I am unsure.  Perhaps this fear that engulfs me is an indictment against my faith.  Or maybe it is that I just don’t want to reach heaven via the electric chair.  Whatever it may be, I cannot deny these deep-seated emotions by pretending they don’t exist.  I cannot lie to myself as I stand at the threshold of eternity.  There is no better prescription for self-honesty than staring death in the face.

             I am beginning to understand that I should not be ashamed as I feel weak and fearful.  There is no shame in honesty.  My struggle, then, is to not let fear and doubt have the upper hand.

 •

Once Jimmy finished his shower, the guards allowed him a quick trip down the tier, past each cell to shake hands good-bye.  When he reached through my bars I gripped his hand tightly in mine, not wanting to let go.  We just stood there in unnerving silence, staring into one another’s eyes.  In his I could see a void of acceptance, and my own reflection.  Finally, Jimmy broke the silence, “Well Lane, be cool my brother. “  His words floated too simply.  They shook me.

            “Alright Jimmy,” and I added, ‘When you get to the death cell do some praying.  It’s not too late and it sure can’t hurt, ya know.”

            With a weak smile he replied, “There you go preaching to me again.  You know what time that is.  Time for me to go.  Softly breaking the tight grip of our hands he and with his eyes watering up he turned and walked away, down the tier and into the waiting arms of the guard team who would chain him up and escort him to the death house.  Jimmy did go, forever.

            He left me waiting, and struggling to find reassurance my faith will overcome the perplexing questions that storm my mind.

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Filed Under: death row, Louisiana, psychological effects, solitary confinement, Voices from Solitary Tagged With: , , ,

Death Row Inmates Sue the FDA Over Execution Drugs

February 9, 2011 By Leave a Comment

“In keeping with established practice, FDA does not review or approve products for the purpose of lethal injection. FDA has not reviewed the products in this shipment to determine their identity, safety, effectiveness, purity, or any other characteristics.”

This is the statement now imprinted on shipments of lethal injection drugs that are brought into the country from foreign sources. Now, a group of six death row inmates is suing the Food and Drug Administration, claiming that the agency’s decision to allow one execution drug across U.S. borders without FDA approval is ”manifestly contrary to law and amount[s] to an abdication of the obligations imposed” by the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938.

The prisoner’s lawsuit stand to throw a serious monkey wrench into the machinery of death. Sodium thiopental, an anesthetic, is one component of the three-drug death cocktail used by most death penalty states–and it is now seriously hard to come by in the United States. This fact has already delayed executions or changed execution protocols in several states.

Hospira, the only company approved to make sodium thiopental for use in the United States, suspended manufacture in 2009 because of a shortage of raw materials, and supplies were already running low in 2010. Last fall, Hospira announced that it would be making the drug only at its plant in Liscate, Italy. But Italy, like most of Europe, eschews capital punishment. As the AP reported in December, “Italy’s Radical Party brought a motion to Parliament, which passed overwhelmingly…, requiring Hospira to ensure that the drug would be used only for medical purposes and would not find its way into prisons.” In January, Hospira announced that it would simply stop importing sodium thiopental to the United States.

In the face of shortages, several states were already casting around for other sources. They included California, which just christened a new $900 million execution chamber at San Quentin in the hopes of overcoming a court-imposed ban on executions. According to KALW’s blog The Informant, documents obtained by the ACLU of Northern California “shed light on California’s frenzied scramble for lethal injection drugs,” in “a search that would eventually take them through Texas, Arizona, England, and Pakistan.”

Along with several other states, including Arizona and Tennessee, California ended up ordering sodium thiopental made in Britain, through a West London pharmaceutical supplier that doubles as a driving school, according to the BBC. That supply was soon cut off as well under a British government ban, but not before states received their first shipments of the drug, with the tacit cooperation of the FDA.

It’s these shipments that are at issue in the lawsuit filed last week against the FDA by the high-powered D.C. law firm of Sidley Austin. According to The Informant, ”many death penalty watchers have raised questions about the quality and legality of those drugs–saying that if the drug malfunctions, inmates could experience tremendous pain while dying, which they say violates the Eight Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.” It is the FDA’s job to make sure that drugs imported to the United States are safe and effective, the lawsuit claims, and their actions with regard to the execution drug is illegal. (The full text of the suit, filed in U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C. on behalf of six inmates from Arizona, California, and Tennessee, can be found here.) The plaintiffs in the civil suit are seeking a declaratory judgement. If they succeed–or even if their case simply takes its time making its way through the courts–they could delay executions in several states.

That’s unlikely to happen, however, in Oklahoma and Ohio, which have begun using a substitute drug–pentobarbital, the drug commonly used to euthanize animals. In December, Oklahoma became the first state to execute a prisoner using pentobarbital, in place of sodium thiopental as part of a three-drug cocktail. In January, Ohio announced that it, too, would use pentobarbital–but alone, and in one massive dose. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, “Ohio is on pace…to set a modern-day state record for executing the most condemned killers in one year.” On Tuesday, the Ohio Supreme Court set execution dates for nine condemned prisoners–approximately one a month through October–and may yet add more. These men will, quite literally, die like dogs.

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Filed Under: Arizona, California, Constitution, corrections industry, death row, Eighth Amendment, lawsuits/litigation, Tennessee Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Santa Was in Prison and Jesus Got the Death Penalty

December 25, 2010 By 7 Comments

As Christmas is celebrated in Incarceration Nation, it’s worth remembering certain things about the two figures who dominate this holiday.

As more than 3,000 Americans sit on death row, we revere the birth of a godly man who was arrested, “tried,” sentenced, and put to death by the state. The Passion is the story of an execution, and the Stations of the Cross trace the path of a Dead Man Walking.

Less well known is the fact that Saint Nicholas, the early Christian saint who inspired Santa Claus, was once a prisoner, like one in every 100 Americans today. Though he was beloved for his kindness and generosity, Nicholas acquired sainthood not only by giving alms, but in part by performing a miracle that more or less amounted to a prison break.

As we described in one of our earliest posts on Solitary Watch, Nicholas was the 4th-century Greek Bishop of Myra (in present-day Turkey). Under the Roman emperor Diocletian, who persecuted Christians, Nicholas spent some five years in prison–and according to some accounts, in solitary confinement.

Under Constantine, the first Christian emperor, Nicholas fared better until the Council of Nicaea, in 325 A.D. There, after having a serious theological argument with another powerful bishop, Nicholas became so enraged that he walked across the room and slapped the man.  

It was illegal for one bishop to strike another. According to an account provided by the St. Nicholas Center: “The bishops stripped Nicholas of his bishop’s garments, chained him, and threw him into jail. That would keep Nicholas away from the meeting. When the Council ended a final decision would be made about his future.”

Nicholas spent the night praying for guidance, and was visited by Jesus and Mary. “When the jailer came in the morning, he found the chains loose on the floor and Nicholas dressed in bishop’s robes, quietly reading the Scriptures.” It was determined that no one could have visited or helped him during the night. Constantine ordered Nicholas freed and reinstated as the Bishop of Myra, and his feat would later be declared one of many miracles performed by the saint.

Saint Nicholas lived on to serve the poor during the devastating famine that hit his part of Turkey in 342 AD. He is reported to have anonymously visited starving families at night and distributed gold coins to help them buy scarce food.

But here in America two thousand years later, Christians go to church to worship an executed savior and shop to commemorate an incarcerated saint, with little thought to their 2 million countrymen who are spending this Christmas behind bars.

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Filed Under: death row, political prisoners, solitary confinement Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Live from Death Row: 3,600 Americans Waiting Alone to Die

April 15, 2010 By 2 Comments

Most residents of the nation’s death rows live in long-term solitary confinement, in what are effectively supermax units for the condemned. They are subject to all of the devastating psychological and physical effects of prolonged isolation, with the added torment of knowing that someday they will more than likely be put to death at the hands of the state. According to a 2009 report from the Death Penalty Information Center: 

Psychologists and lawyers in the United States and elsewhere have argued that protracted periods in the confines of death row can make inmates suicidal, delusional and insane. Some have referred to the living conditions on death row–the bleak isolation and years of uncertainty as to time of execution–as the “death row phenomenon,” and the psychological effects that can result as “death row syndrome.” 

Four times a year, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund compiles statistics and other information on the men and women who live in these conditions on death rows across the United States. It has just released the Fall 2009 edition of Death Row USA, which has figures through October 1, 2009. At that time, there were 3,263 death row inmates in state and federal prisons. The largest number are in California (694), followed by Florida (395) and Texas (339). About 44 percent of those death row inmates are white, 42 percent are black, and 12 percent are Latino. More than 98 percent are male. 

In the grim calculus of the death penalty, the numbers have changed somewhat in the intervening six months. Twenty-five prisoners have been executed since October 1, 2009. Two more died of natural causes, including an Arizona inmate who, at age 94, was the oldest death row prisoner in the United States. We could not find reliable information on the number of new death sentences meted out in those same six months–but since death sentences were down in 2009 and executions were up (after the Supreme Court gave the go-ahead to lethal injections), it’s safe to say that America’s death rows are not quite maintaining their replacement rate. 

Graphic from Death Penalty Information Center. Figures from U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.

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Filed Under: California, death row, Florida, physical effects, politics of punishment, psychological effects, race, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, Texas, torture Tagged With: , , , , , ,

The Machinery of Death: Some Death Row Prisoners Can Still Opt for Firing Squad (or Electric Chair, Gas Chamber, or Noose)

April 7, 2010 By 12 Comments

The state of Utah is going to allow death row inmate Ronnie Lee Gardner to choose how he dies–as long as he chooses either lethal injection or a firing squad. Gardner is one of a shrinking groups of condemned prisoners, in more than a dozen states, who are still permitted to make a final, macabre choice between lethal injection and a second method of execution–which might be the firing squad, the electric chair, the gas chamber, or the noose.

Gardner has been on death row since 1985, when he was convicted of killing an attorney during an escape attempt at the Salt Lake Metro Hall of Justice. A judge will likely sign Gardner’s death warrant next week, with an execution date set in June. Under Utah law, he is among a handful of longtime death row inmates who has the right to choose between the state’s current means of executing prisoners and its previous one. 

According to Terry Lenamon’s Death Penalty blog, “In Utah, it was only recently that their state legislature nixed the option of a death penalty by firing squad–and when it acted, four men sat on Death Row for whom the new law did not apply.  These four men were ‘grandfathered’ into the prior law, and the execution methods that were options when they were sentenced are legally still available to them today. Ronnie Lee Gardner is one of these men.”

After a hearing on Monday, assistant Utah Attorney General Thomas Brunker said the state would not contest Gardner’s choice. “And to help him decide,” the Salt Lake City Tribune reports, ”the Utah Department of Corrections has agreed to release general information about the execution methods to Gardner’s lawyers.” In response to a request from Gardner, the DOC will provide his attorneys with “relevant documents [that] detail the training and expertise of the execution team. The identity of the team members and other information affecting security will not be included.”

Tom Patterson, executive director of the DOC, said the department is prepared to muster a firing squad, if need be. “If Mr. Gardner would like to be executed in that format and the court orders that, then we will carry that out,” he said. But according to a report by Fox 13 in Salt Lake City, corrections officials are concerned about a death by firing squad creating a media ”circus.” An execution by this method would be “novel” even for Utah, Patterson said. What’s more, “We are the only state that has firing squad at this point, and so yeah, it does become a bit of a novelty, nationwide and even worldwide.”

The most famous U.S. execution by firing squad in modern times also took place in Utah: In 1977, multiple murderer Gary Gilmore was killed by five men with rifles, while strapped to a chair with a hood over his head and a target pinned over his heart. (Gilmore’s choice had been between firing squad and hanging.) He was the first person to be executed in the United States for nearly ten years, after the Supreme Courts lifted an effective ban on capital punishment. Since that time, one other man, John Albert Taylor, has chosen to die by firing squad, also in Utah. According to the New York Times, Taylor chose this method for his 1996 execution “to make a statement that Utah was sanctioning murder.”

While firing squads are unique to Utah (or almost–see Oklahoma, below), a number of other states still give condemned prisoners a choice of execution methods. The “primary” or “default” method in all cases is lethal injection. But some states still still offer their previous method, as well–often, like Utah, only to inmates who were originally sentenced to die by that method.

In  Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia, some prisoners can choose between a lethal injection and the electric chair. In Arizona, California, Maryland, and Missouri, they can opt for the gas chamber. Hanging is still permitted in Washington (if the prisoner requests it) and New Hampshire (if a lethal injection for some reason can’t be given).

Many state laws even designate “backup” methods, just in case the primary method is struck down by the courts. Oklahoma, in particular, seems determined not to take any chances. According to the Death Penalty Information Center (which maintains detailed data on execution methods), the state of Oklahoma “authorizes electrocution if lethal injection is ever held to be unconstitutional and firing squad if both lethal injection and electrocution are held unconstitutional.”

Federal prisoners who receive the death penalty are generally executed according to the methods used in the state in which their crime took place. This means that in theory, at least, under the authority of the United States of America, prisoners can be poisoned, electrocuted, gassed, hanged, or shot. 

There is one way of dying, however, that no state allows its prisoners to choose: Suicide. Last month, an Ohio inmate named Lawrence Reynolds tried to overdose on stockpiled antidepressants two days before his execution date. Prison officials rushed him to the hospital, where he was revived. An investigation by the state concluded that Reynolds, who had been on death row for 16 years, wanted to ”end it” by his own hand, so as to ”not give the state any satisfaction of killing him.” But the state reserved its right to be Reynolds’ executioner: Nine days after his suicide attempt, it put him to death in the lethal injection chamber.

Suicide attempts by death row inmates are not uncommon, though they are rarely successful. Some advocates have suggested, however, that condemned prisoners who waive their rights to appeal are committing a form of legal suicide. Dr. Stuart Grassian, a psychiatrist and expert on the effects of solitary confinement and death row, has stated that “the conditions of confinement are so oppressive, the helplessness endured in the roller coaster of hope and despair so wrenching and exhausting, that ultimately the inmate can no longer bear it,” and choosing to die may be the only way “that he has any sense of control over his fate.”

According to the Salt Lake City Tribune, during his 25 years on death row, Ronnie Lee Gardner “periodically asked judges to allow him to die, either saying he was frustrated with delays in the case or racked with pain from rheumatoid arthritis, but then continued to challenge his sentence.” His appeals were finally exhausted in March. Since then, Gardner has been left to ponder the only choice left to him by a state that has power over his life and death: Whether to be poisoned by lethal injection, or shot through the heart.

Filed Under: death row, lawsuits/litigation, psychological effects, solitary confinement, suicide, Utah Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,
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