Chilling Testimony Of Death Row Executioners Casts Dark Shadow Over Entire System

Huntsville Unit Execution Chamber, Huntsville, Texas

Huntsville Unit's Execution Chamber, Huntsville, Texas

At some point for Fred Allen, something snapped. He’d done one too many. He broke.

Years had gone by, but he could still picture the eyes of every inmate he'd helped tie down, restrain with multiple straps so that the execution team could slide needles into his veins, enabling deadly chemicals to surge through his body.

The chilling Sound Portraits radio documentary from 2000, "Witness to an Execution," won a Peabody Award that year, and there is no question why. It's unnerving, eye-opening, and massively instrumental in illustrating the process, the nuances, and the anatomy of an execution — something we're far too unfamiliar with.

In the documentary, Allen spoke about his experiences publicly for the first time.

"I was just working in the shop and all of a sudden something just triggered in me and I started shaking … And tears, uncontrollable tears, was coming out of my eyes. And what it was was something triggered within and it just — everybody — all of these executions all of a sudden all sprung forward."

Allen had been on the "tie down team" for about 120 executions at the Walls Unit Prison in Huntsville, Texas. And he couldn’t do it again.

He left his job shortly thereafter.

In the Sound Portraits radio documentary, several wardens discuss their memories. Though their voices are somber, and sometimes quivering, they guide us through the process of the execution, from beginning to end.

One said, "It's kind of hard to explain what you actually feel, you know, when you talk to a man and you kind of get to know that person, and then you walk him out of a cell and you take him in there to the chamber and tie him down. And then a few minutes later he's … He's gone."

Chaplain Brazzil said that after the inmate is strapped down, all the officers leave. And then it's himself and the warden in the chamber, and there will be a medical team come in and they will establish an IV into each arm.

Usually in about three minutes, they have the inmate hooked up to the lines. And at that time, the inmate's lying on the gurney and Willett and Chaplain Brazzil are in the execution chamber with him.

The Chaplain said, "I usually put my hand on their leg right below their knee, you know, and I usually give 'em a squeeze, let 'em know I'm right there. You can feel the trembling, the fear that's there, the anxiety that's there. You can feel the heart surging, you know. You can see it pounding through their shirt."

The warden then stands at the head of the prisoner and the Chaplain stands with his hand on the prisoner's knee. The warden asks the condemned man if he has any last words he'd like to say. "A boom mike will come down from the ceiling and sometimes you can see the man who's strapped in with probably eight to 10 straps across his body," the narrator says. "He'll struggle to get his voice close to the mike. It's not necessary, but he does it anyway."

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Source: PolicyMic, January 15, 2014

n.b.: DPN is of the opinion that no one in the free world is ever actually coerced into putting someone to death. Corrections Officers who feel that taking part in an execution shouldn't be part of their job, who believe that injecting someone with a lethal substance is morally wrong and contrary to the most basic human values can tender their resignation and get themselves another job. DPN: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.

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