Texas town pays little notice to executions in its midst

Located about 70 miles north of Houston’s suburban sprawl, Huntsville is a curious mix of college town and the crown jewel of the Texas criminal justice system.

It is the home of Sam Houston State University and 17,000 college students. Just blocks away from the university sits the Huntsville unit of the Department of Criminal Justice (left) where about 1,700 men are incarcerated. It is also home to the state’s death chamber, where seven men have been executed so far this year.

If former South Dakota residents Kevin Varga and Billy Galloway are executed as scheduled on Wednesday and Thursday, respectively, they will be the eighth and ninth people to die there in 2010. That number is expected to rise to 11 before the month is over. Varga, along with fellow South Dakotan Galloway, were sentenced to death a decade ago in connection with the slaying of Maj. David Lawrence Logie on Sept. 9, 1998.

Locals estimate that more than half of Huntsville is probably employed by the state’s criminal justice department. That makes its economy somewhat recession-proof, but it also limits its growth because of low wages, said Jerry Register, a local attorney and a regular at the Cafe Texan, a well-known eatery in Huntsville famous for its chicken-fried steaks, black-eyed peas and mixed greens with bacon.

Huntsville is a scenic town set on the “western edge of the Southern Pine forests,” said John Williford, another Cafe Texan patron. Williford calls it the “Athens of east Texas” for the cultural opportunities that the local university brings to an otherwise small, rural town. It has plenty of friendly people, but none of the oil wealth that surrounds it.

Away from the central downtown district, heavily weighted with antique shops and a massive Walker County Courthouse, Huntsville has the usual run of strip malls, fast-food places and plenty of pawn shops.

At the Texas Prison Museum on the north edge of town, Huntsville pays tribute to its penal system heritage. More than 24,000 visitors came through the museum last year and its most popular exhibit is the capital punishment display, including “Old Sparky” -- an electric chair. The Witness to an Execution exhibit features a running monologue of justice department workers speaking about how many executions they have witnessed. The numbers are often high, including the 89 executions that Jim Willett, museum director and former Huntsville warden, has to his credit.

But there is also a thoughtful photo essay of black and white portraits of family members affected by death row crimes -- both the victims of crimes and the families of the condemned prisoners -- on display. On Monday, Jim Jones and his wife, of San Antonio, spent an hour perusing the museum while vacationing at nearby Lake Conroe. “I agree with it, but it does have to be applied judiciously. I think Texas does that,” Jones said.

Few of the regulars at the Cafe Texan, or anyone else in Huntsville, will pay much attention to Varga (left) or Galloway's execution, locals said. Only a few high-profile cases garner media interest here anymore.

Today, there are 329 people on death row in Texas: 10 women and 319 men.

No one expects much media attention to be paid in Texas to Varga’s death. He will be, after all, the 455th person to die by lethal injection in the state of Texas since 1982, when the state resumed executions after the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty.

In 2009 the state held 24 executions. It looks like it will top that in 2010. Those numbers dwarf South Dakota’s own recent execution statistics. Elijah Page was executed at the South Dakota State Penitentiary in 2007 for murdering Chester Alan Poage in 2000. Before that, the state’s last execution was in 1947.

Like many in Huntsville, Mary Rainwater is matter of fact about executions.

Rainwater is a 33-year-old newspaper reporter at the Huntsville Item. After only one year on the job, she is already a seasoned veteran of the execution beat.

Rainwater said she knew attending executions was part of the job description. She records the inmate’s last statement, if there is one, and sits through any press conference held by the victim’s family. She has attended “seven, maybe eight,” executions to date and said that the clinical nature of the event makes it less stressful for her than people might expect.

“People always ask me that, but it honestly doesn’t bother me. You can see a lot worse ways for people to die on ‘CSI.’”

A short story in the next day’s local paper may be the only notice paid to Varga’s death here in Huntsville, said Robin Norris, Varga’s appellate attorney for the past 10 years.

“These things just tend to happen, and then you read about them in the paper,” Norris said, with all the resignation of a criminal defense lawyer who has represented more than 15 Texas death row inmates in the last 14 years. “Nobody gets very excited about it. Well, not nobody, but not the majority of the people of Texas, unfortunately.”

Nathan Reeves, 21, is a junior broadcast student at Sam Houston State who grew up in Huntsville and considers himself a death penalty proponent. He has been in the death chamber twice for school trips, but said execution days are something he doesn’t give much thought.

“We’re pretty immune to what happens at the prison,” Register agreed.

That doesn’t mean the town’s citizens are all death penalty proponents. Register’s coffee partner and fellow attorney, Jim Hurst, wants to see it abolished because of the many inequalities in the way it is applied.

But Hurst said he never notices executions, either, except for a newspaper story or two, and said abolitionist protests are pointless.

“That’s not where change happens,” he said of the few protestors who might show up to picket an execution. “Change happens at the Legislature in Austin.”

Source: Rapid City Journal, Mary Carrigan, May 10, 2010

More on Kevin Varga on this website.

Kevin Varga's "Death Watch Journal" is currently published on Thomas Whitaker's website "Minutes Before Six". Thomas Whitaker is currently on Death Row in the state of Texas.