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| Donald A. Cabana |
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Donald A. Cabana, who ran the state penitentiary at Parchman where he oversaw executions and later wrote about his experiences with death row inmates, has died. He was 67.
Mississippi corrections officials say Cabana died Monday at Wesley Medical Center in Hattiesburg after a long illness.
Cabana spent 40 years in corrections including stints as warden at Parchman and commissioner of the Department of Corrections. He also was chairman of the criminal justice programs at the University of Southern Mississippi and William Carey University. He also worked as warden at the Harrison County jail.
In the 1980s, Cabana supervised two executions, that of Edward Earl Johnson and Connie Ray Evans.
In his memoir — "Death At Midnight: The Confessions of an Executioner" — Cabana recounted his experiences with death row inmates and how he came to oppose the death penalty.
In the preface to the book, Cabana wrote that he spent most of his career as a prison administrator convinced of the need for capital punishment.
"I had always been something of a bureaucratic utopian, fully committed to the notion that if the government deemed capital punishment necessary then it must be so ... Not until I was confronted with supervising and carrying out the ultimate retribution did I begin to question the process in earnest.
"The execution of Edward Earl Johnson served as a milestone, an event at which to pause and wonder. But it was the execution of Connie Ray Evans that became, for me, a personal moment of truth," Cabana wrote.
A BBC documentary in 1987 "Fourteen Days in May," followed the two weeks leading up to the Johnson's execution including Cabana's role as warden.
In testimony before a Minnesota legislative committee in 1995, Cabana said: "However we do it, in the name of justice, in the name of law and order, in the name of retribution, you . . . do not have the right to ask me, or any prison official, to bloody my hands with an innocent person's blood. . . If we wrongfully incarcerate somebody, we can correct that wrong. But if we execute an innocent person by mistake, what is it we're supposed to say — Oops?"
Cabana later wrote "The History of Capital Punishment in Mississippi," which covered the death penalty in Mississippi from public hangings to the electric chair to the gas chamber to lethal injection.
"Crime is, and should be, of grave concern to every right-thinking American. We are a people, however, in search of the quick fix, the simple solution, to a very complex problem. Only when we become serious about fighting poverty, child abuse, drugs, and a host of other scourges will we begin to make serious inroads on violent crimes. I was seldom surprised that the hundreds of condemned prisoners I worked with were on death row. But, when I had learned of their backgrounds and the sordid details of their so-called formative years, I was very often surprised that it had taken them as long as it had to get them there."
- Donald A. Cabana, Death At Midnight
Source: AP, October 8, 2013
Fourteen Days in May (Full documentary) - 87 mn