He stood inside the execution chamber at the Huntsville Unit 43 times as a prison chaplain.
Today, he's 74, preaching at the First United Methodist Church in Refugio. But the Rev. Ken Houston still recalls the tight, sterile space vividly, where it was once his job to stand near a gurney and lay hands on death row inmates as they were administered lethal injections.
"Most of the time, I didn't know why they were being executed until afterward. I didn't want to know because I was afraid it might influence the way I ministered to them," said Houston, who formerly prayed and shared the Gospel with some of Texas' most violent and murderous offenders. "They may not have deserved to ever get out of prison and walk amongst us again, but every man has the right to salvation."
Houston spent three years of his life working as Huntsville's prison chaplain, ministering to the general population, performing more than 300 funerals for inmates who died while incarcerated and praying alongside the inmates at the Polunsky Unit, Huntsville's death row residence.
"Most of them would talk with me just like you and me are talking now," he said. "I'm a big guy, so I was never afraid or intimidated. I would sometimes reach inside their bars and hold their hands while we prayed. A few of them I baptized out of a Styrofoam cup."
On the day of an execution, they were taken from Polunsky to a room at the Huntsville prison, also called "Walls Unit," 8 steps from the execution chamber, Houston said. For the next few hours, Houston met with the family and the inmate, administered final prayers and assisted with any last requests, including final meals.
"One inmate wanted chitterlings; one wanted a bag of Jolly Ranchers. Some wanted a steak. Most of the time, they wanted a hamburger; that was the most requested," said Houston, who helped the inmates obtain any final meal items not provided by the prison. "A lot of them wouldn't eat it. They'd pick at it and look at it. But it's a tough day. I mean, who can eat at a time like that, anyway?"
When it was time, he walked eight steps to the execution chamber with the inmate and helped them get ready to die.
"The chaplain stands at his feet, the warden at his head, and the warden asks if they have any final words, which some did and some didn't," Houston said, mentioning he and the warden always wore nice suits, cowboy boots and sometimes cowboy hats to show respect for both the families and the inmates. "I always put my hand on their leg to provide them some comfort."
A few moments later, the warden would adjust his glasses or give a signal to the doctors behind the glass it was time to administer the chemicals.
Inside the room, only a few feet separated the inmate from one-sided glass windows of onlookers, where the family of the inmate, family of the victims and doctors administering the lethal injection chemicals looked on.
"Everyone I worked with during that time was highly professional," he said. "No one ever acted like, 'We got you now, sucker,' and neither did any of the crew."
It wasn't an easy job, recalls Houston, who admitted the secondary psychological and spiritual messiness of ministering to the men - who ranged from what he describes as pure evil to those who made mistakes grave enough to land them on death row - was something he had to reconcile daily.
"Sometimes, after (an execution), I would go home at night and I wouldn't even turn the lights on. I would sit there and think about what has taken place," Houston remembered, mentioning he lived in a state house behind the prison. "The sheer nonsense of people who had thrown their life away because of the crimes they committed, it troubled me."
Serving as a chaplain at Huntsville, Texas' oldest prison, was a job he accepted during a ministerial transition phase in his life, from 1999 to 2001, a period of three years that taught him more about God and the need for sharing the Gospel than any other long stint he has performed in church ministry since.
"It gave me a deeper understanding of God's grace and how God could possibly forgive people for sins against Christ," he said. "You have to be able to love a person regardless of what they've done. It's an agape (altruistic) kind of love, the kind God has for us, the kind that says, 'I don't care what you've done; I love you anyway.'"
At the time, Houston was 42 years old and a newly divorced Southern Baptist preacher. He knew after the divorce it was possible that finding a new church assignment with the Southern Baptist denomination could be difficult. That's ultimately what led him to transition into Methodism with the help of his second wife, Lynn Houston, a practicing Methodist who met her husband while leading a large prison ministry through her church in Corpus Christi at the time. She was also a prison lay minister and helped send 400 letters to prisoners each month.
When she decided to cross over into ministering on death row, she reached out to the prison chaplains at Huntsville, where she would eventually meet her husband.
The 2 bonded over their passion for prisoners. And on the night they married, Houston and the warden allowed her to tour the death row facilities.
"He had such a big heart for them," she said. "He knew some of those guys did horrible, horrible things, but he knew they needed God."
Some of the men Houston ministered to on death row included Jason Massey, who was executed in 2001 for fatally shooting 2 siblings, Christina Benjamin, 13 and stepbrother James King, 14. Massey also severed the girl's hands and feet, and there was evidence of sexual crimes.
Houston was there as Massey was executed. Massey used his final moments to apologize a final time to the victims' family, utter a prayer and admit to police where he left the girl's remains - in the Trinity River.
"That's heavy stuff to take home each night," he recalled, remembering how calm Massey was on the day of his execution.
But Houston said Massey was a unique turnaround in prison and one of the few he believes truly accepted Christ while in prison. He even wrote an emphatic prayer in Houston's Bible before he died, which he said some of the death row inmates would do after a period of time to show their appreciation for Houston's time with them.
"Some of them were very hostile when I tried to talk with them about Christ, but a lot of them were very sorrowful for what they had done," he said, acknowledging the job required a strong countenance on his part and constant time in prayer with the Lord to sort out the balance between performing his job, maintaining order and rules of the prison and practicing non-judgment.
"Even now, I have people who ask me how I could minister to these men. They can't understand forgiveness in this context, how anybody could kill 2 or 3 children and a mom and a dad and possibly go to heaven," he said. "But knowing what the Bible says, I use scripture to explain it. When Christ went to the cross, he died for all men, not just the good ones."
Houston said he still hasn't formed a solid opinion about whether he accepts the death penalty as just or needed. He admits it's more cost-efficient to house the inmates for life rather than execute them. He recognizes the irony of those who are executed and what's written on their death certificates as a cause of death: "Homicide by lethal injection." He also realizes few have cares for death row prisoners housed at the Polunsky Unit at Huntsville, where they spend their days in a small enclosure with no windows to the outside world and an hour a day in an outdoor caged space for recreation.
"It's very inhumane. It's hotter than the hubs of hell in there. Those cells are cold in the winter and hot in the summer," he said.
But he does recognize the need for prison chaplaincy. And has seen the positive effect it has had on men and women's lives, evidenced by the few who show up after they're paroled.
Only a few months ago, after the ravage of Hurricane Harvey, a previous prisoner he and his wife ministered to while in prison showed up in Refugio with a truckload of supplies and food.
"It was as if he was trying to repay us somehow for what we could do for him while in prison," Lynn Houston said.
It's been 17 years since his last execution, but Houston is forever changed by what he learned as a Huntsville chaplain. And he still gives sermons on grace and forgiveness, teaching lessons he learned about the salvation of murderers.
"I wouldn't change anything about that time in my life because the lessons I learned about God I wouldn't have learned otherwise," he said. "I've truly been in the trenches of ministry."
Source: Victoria Advocate, February 3, 2018
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
