Florida | After witnessing the execution of William Van Poyck, 'the world didn't seem safer. I was just numb'
A judge sentenced William Van Poyck to die for the 1987 murder of a Glades prison guard. He was executed decades later. Jane Musgrave covered the execution of William Van Poyck in 2013 for The Palm Beach Post.
I remember a black hearse that looked like something out of a 1940s gangster movie driving along a fog-shrouded field at dusk, carrying William Van Poyck’s body from Florida State Prison.
I remember hearing his sister calling after it. “ 'Oh Billy, Billy!'" she cried. "'He's finally free. He's outside those prison walls.'"
I remember hearing a group of nuns and other death penalty opponents chanting and praying. Across the muddy field outside the sprawling prison, family members of the man Van Poyck murdered celebrated.
After waiting nearly three decades for the 58-year-old Van Poyck to be killed for murdering prison guard Fred Griffis in a botched attempt to free a Glades Correctional Institution inmate, family members said they finally had gotten justice.
"Today has been a long time coming," one of Griffis’ cousins told reporters, railing at how Van Poyck and his accomplice manipulated the system. "It's been almost 26 years. It was an open-and-shut case."
Weeks before execution marked by lawyers' efforts to block 'the inevitable'
While I have many memories of that slow-moving day in June 2013 I don’t remember feeling that anything had been accomplished. The world didn't seem safer, less violent or more just. I was just numb.
Before I left West Palm Beach in June 2013 to drive nearly 300 miles to the aptly named town of Starke to witness Van Poyck’s death by lethal injection, I hadn’t thought about the impact it might have on me.
Then I got a phone call from a fellow reporter. “Call me if you want to talk,” she said, explaining that she had watched a condemned inmate breathe his last breath and knew that, for some, it was soul-crushing.
Until then, I hadn’t fully realized I was joining a small group of people who had witnessed the state’s most macabre and frightening force: the power to kill — clinically.
In the six-week run-up to the execution after Gov. Rick Scott signed Van Poyck’s death warrant, I had spent countless hours reporting on Van Poyck’s hopelessly outmanned two-person legal team run through state and federal courts in an unsuccessful attempt to block the inevitable.
One of his lawyers was on vacation in Europe when he learned he had weeks to spare Van Poyck’s life. The other was a solo practitioner in Jacksonville, who readily admitted he had neither the training, experience or know-how to run the high-pressure gantlet of appeals.
Between the court hearings, I had talked to Griffis’ grieving siblings. I knew the heartache they suffered in 1987 when their beloved brother, a 40-year-old decorated Vietnam veteran, was gunned down shortly after starting work at the prison.
I knew how their pain was exacerbated in the ensuing decades as unrelated chaos kept their brother’s death in the news and while Van Poyck established himself as an award-winning writer, publishing books and an online “Death Row Diary.”
Van Poyck’s acclaim. The bizarre saga of his convicted accomplice, Frank Valdes, who snared headlines by getting married while on death row and later when he was beaten to death by prison guards. The never-ending accounts blocked any hope Griffis’ family had of moving on.
"We want it over and done with," one of Griffis' sisters told me. "The way it's dragged on for years. … I want justice for Freddy."
Injured GCI prison guard traveled to execution for 'closure'
Neither she, her brother or other close family members attended the execution. Instead, they had a private gathering in Palm Beach County to honor their brother’s life.
Steve Turner, a fellow Glades Correctional guard who was with Griffis when Van Poyck and Valdes ambushed their prison van, traveled to Starke.
“Closure,” he told me when I asked him why he made the trip with his oldest son.
Turner was sitting in the driver’s seat when a gun-waving Van Poyck approached the prison vehicle. Van Poyck wanted Griffis and Turner to release his best friend, convicted murderer James O’Brien, who had been driven to a West Palm Beach dermatologist for skin cancer treatment.
Instead, Griffis threw the keys to the van in the bushes. Within seconds, Griffis was shot dead.
While Turner was just grazed by a bullet and survived, he said the experience shattered his life. His young sons were traumatized. His marriage crumbled. He ultimately abandoned his dream of working in law enforcement and moved to Georgia to raise his kids.
Like the rest of us, he sat in an uncomfortable chair in a drab room, peering through a Plexiglas window as prison staff pulled back the curtains so we could watch as the "execution team" prepared Van Poyck to die.
Van Poyck, who refused his last meal and instead spent his final hours talking to his sister and a spiritual adviser, smiled slightly as the curtain was pulled back. His arms outstretched, his body covered by a white sheet, his last words were brief: “Set me free.”
Then he closed his eyes and never opened them again. About nine minutes into the process, a member of the execution team shook him slightly. I was told it was to assure he was unconscious after receiving the first batch of drugs, a sedative delivered intravenously.
When he didn’t respond after being jostled, the second and third drugs were pumped into his veins. They stopped his heart. He showed no discomfort.
The entire process couldn’t have taken more than 15 minutes.
Witnessing an execution a 'profound' experience few wish to know
I remember looking at Turner and his oldest son after prison staff pulled the curtain closed, signaling the execution was over. If there was relief on their faces, I didn’t see it.
No one spoke. The roughly 30 witnesses — the Turners, reporters, prison staff and others — filed out silently and climbed back into prison vans that took us to our cars.
Later, standing in the muddy field, Turner insisted he was glad he had come. “This is the time justice has prevailed for Fred and his family as well as for me, myself and my family," he said without emotion.
As an observer, I couldn't even begin to understand what he and the Griffis family had gone through or what it meant to them. To me, it just felt hollow and more than a little obscene.
In the ensuing years, I have rarely talked about the ritualistic death I witnessed. Truthfully, few — even family members or close friends — have expressed any interest in hearing about it.
Knowing even those who are curious have little stomach for the details, I typically offer this less-than-deep thought: The experience was profound.
In Van Poyck's last post in his Death Row Diary, which he sent to his sister to put online, he noted that for years he had an unwanted close-up seat to the state-sanctified death rite. The pace accelerated under Scott, who signed 28 warrants, more than any other governor in state history.
Even as Van Poyck's date with death grew closer and his hopes for a successful appeal vanished, he didn’t bemoan his fate. Instead, he waxed poetic and ended the missive on an upbeat note.
“Whatever happens, it's all good, it's just the way it's supposed to be," he wrote.
Source: palmbeachpost.com, Jane Musgrave, October 31, 2022. Jane Musgrave covers federal and civil courts and occasionally ventures into criminal trials in state court for The Palm Beach Post.
RELATED CONTENT
Death Row Diary
William Van Poyck, who was sentenced to death for killing a prison guard, was moved to Sussex State Prison in Virginia for his safety. That's where he wrote a 324-page autobiography, "A Checkered Past: A Memoir," saying his purpose was not to elicit sympathy but "to put a human face on me and convicts in general."
Death Row Diary
by William Van Poyck
Van Poyck went on to write two novels and won awards for his writing. Kept in solitary confinement for nearly 26 years, he regularly wrote to his sister about his life on death row, and in recent years she published his letters to a blog called Death Row Diary.
In these letters, Poyck wrote about everything from the novels and history books he was reading and shows he 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 commented 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.”
February 25, 2012
Robert Waterhouse was scheduled for execution at 6:00 pm 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 frantically 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.
May 22, 2013
I have 21 days left to live. The fickleness, the arbitrariness, the fleeting nature of life itself is on display daily throughout our world but as good an example as any occurred here on Monday morning when, as I was being dressed out here on Q-Wing for a visit, a sudden radio call brought the wing officers rushing upstairs where they found a prisoner (non-death row) hanging in his cell. After 20+ years in prison this guy (Earl) had finally given in to the utter hopelessness that can seize the heart and spirit of any man mired forever in an American maximum security prison. The irony wasn’t lost on me that while 3 of us on death watch are fighting to live, this poor soul, living just 10 feet above us, stripped of all hope, had voluntarily surrendered his life rather than continue his dismal existence. When nothing but a lifetime of suffering lays ahead – with no hope, no promise, no opportunity to change your fate – the idea of utter annihilation can come to look appealing in contrast. When everything has been taken from you, the one thing you have left, that nobody can take away, is the decision to live or die. In that context choosing death can look like freedom…
Today my neighbor, Elmer, went on Phase II of death watch, which begins 7 days prior to execution. They remove all your property from your cell while an officer sits in front of your cell 24/7 recording everything you do. Staff also performs a “dry run” or “mock execution”, basically duplicating the procedures that will occur 7 days later. This is when you know you’re making the final turn off the back stretch, you know your death is imminent, easily within reach, you can count it by hours instead of by days. Right now I’m on deck; when Elmer goes I’ll be up to bat (that’s enough sports metaphors for now)…
May 28, 2013
Tomorrow Elmer will be executed and I’ll be next up to bat, with 15 days to live. A situation like this tends to make you reflect on the elusive nature of time itself, which some folks – physicists and metaphysicists alike – claim is an illusion anyway. Real or not it sure seems to be going someplace quickly!…
This may be my last letter to reach you before you begin your journey down south to be by my side for my final days. These many visits I’ve recently received from those who love me have been a blessing for me. I’m acutely aware that some guys on death watch have absolutely nobody to help them bear their burden during their last days and hours on earth, not a soul willing to share some love. It’s a terrible thing to die all alone…
I read in a recent newspaper article that the brother and sister of Fred Griffis, the victim in my case, are angry that I’m still alive and eager for my execution. These are understandable human feelings. I have a brother and sister myself and I cannot honestly say how I would deal with it if something happened to you or Jeff at the hands of another. I have thought of Fred many times over the years and grieved over his senseless death. I feel bad for Fred’s siblings though if seeing another human being die will truly give them pleasure. I suspect when I’m gone, if they search their hearts, they will grasp the emptiness of the closure promised by the revenge of capital punishment. There’s a lot of wisdom in the old saying “An eye for an eye soon makes the whole world blind.”…
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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
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde