by Tahir Shah
During the case that followed, Linda Block dismissed her lawyers and took on her own legal defense. Such an action is unprecedented in a death penalty case.
‘When you hire an attorney,’ she says, ‘you’re signing your life over to him. I fired my attorneys and did a far better job at defending myself than they had done on my behalf. When you are fighting for your life, you begin to understand what’s important and what’s not.’
Expecting a sentence of manslaughter or life without parole, Linda was stunned at hearing she was to die by electrocution.
‘When the judge read the verdict,’ she says reflecting, ‘I sensed the blood drain from my face and I felt faint. I had been sentenced to death by the state of Alabama. But I forced myself to sit erect, to show no emotion, no response. I have become a master of self-control. I wasn’t going to give anyone the satisfaction of seeing how much shock and pain they had inflicted upon me. Although I didn’t expect to get death, I did not want life without parole. I had decided that if they were going to convict me, go ahead and let them give me the death penalty. At least then you get an automatic appeal.’
Linda Block’s apathetic expression was seen by the press as proof that she was nothing more than a cold, calculated killer. She was transported directly from court to Tutwiler Prison.
‘When I arrived here I was given a full strip-search,’ she explains. ‘It’s the most dehumanizing process any woman could ever go through. I hated it and was extremely upset. In Alabama, men can be present at female strip-searches. The warden saw the expression on my face when I had to strip in front of all those people. She said to me “I understand how you feel. We’re not doing this as a punishment… it’s the rules. If you behave, we’ll never do this again. Being here is punishment enough”.’
‘On my first night in this cell,’ Linda continues, ‘I lay on my bed and thought “My God, I have been sentenced to death… how on Earth did I get here?” The first few days were so depressing. Like most women, I cry when I’m depressed. I miss my son more than anything. We’ve changed his identity to protect him from the media, and he’s gone to live with my mother. Being away from him is the greatest punishment of all.’
New Death Row inmates are put on a ninety-day probationary period in total isolation. Psychiatrists watch to see if they’re adjusting to the rigorous regime. The initial short sharp shock determines whether the convict will survive the decade or more she’s likely to spend at the periphery of death. During the three months of solitary confinement the inmate has almost no privileges and is isolated even from the other residents of the Row. Human contact is kept to an absolute minimum.
When the ninety days are up, the prisoner is permitted a little more interaction with the other Death Row women. They have opportunities to gather together in the chapel or in their own exercise yard. Misbehaviour of any kind results in severe discipline and the suspension of any privileges they have earned.
‘At times the struggle is too much,’ says Linda. ‘And I’ve felt like writing a letter to the governor and telling him to sign the form to have me sent to the chair. But although I do get despondent, I’ve decided to fight my situation. My life is now a clock ticking away the minutes. Every moment is part of a race – a race to win my appeal and to win back my life. If I were to accept my situation then, psychologically, I would lose my fight.’
‘For me, the most depressing two days were Christmas and my son’s birthday. I don’t dare reveal my depression to the guards as they’d put me on suicide watch. That’s the worst thing that could happen. They take your sheets and blankets, your toothbrush, shoe-laces and even your soap. People wonder why there are so many suicides on Death Row. It’s because Death Row is so drawn out. It’s like having an axe hanging over your head day and night. It never goes away. You keep waiting for it to fall.’
Alabama’s Women on Death Row are segregated from the general prison population, with whom they have no interaction. Three short blasts on the intercom indicate the rare occasion that a Death Row inmate is being moved.
‘When I am taken out of my cell,’ says Linda, ‘my wrists are handcuffed behind my back. If I’m ever taken outside the building, my ankles are shackled. I still have scars from wearing leg-shackles while at court. When a Death Row inmate is taken through a main corridor, the whole prison is locked down.’
The other convicts are forced to stand behind special grates, watching the Death Row inmate with deep fascination, as if almost with a sense of awe.
‘It gives the impression’, she continues, ‘that we’re so dangerous to society that even our fellow prisoners must be protected from us.’
As Linda Block’s case was going through the courts, the US Senate was passing the controversial new Crime Bill.
The death penalty is something of a magic wand for the American legal system: it pleases the voters, boosts prosecutors’ careers and, conveniently, it disposes of the evidence. Spurred on by public anger at the escalation of violent offences, and the eagerness of politicians to make their mark, the Bill ushered in dozens of new capital offences.
‘The Crime Bill,’ says George Kendall, of New York’s Legal Defense Fund, ‘was the largest expansion of death penalty crimes in the history of the United States. Before it was passed, there were only a couple of offences that carried a sentence of death. Now there are over sixty.’
As public pressure grows to execute violent offenders, hundreds of new female inmates are expected to find their way to Death Row. At present, forty-eight women in the USA have been sentenced to die for their crimes. Spread across fourteen states, they wait for their appeals to be used up and the executioner to summon them. Society’s confusion over whether or not to kill its female killers, has resulted in Death Row’s women lingering in incarceration for years.
Legal experts and lobby groups alike are predicting a long, gruesome spate of female executions throughout America’s Deep South – known locally as the ‘Death Belt’. With Death Rows filled to capacity, politicians and the public are baying for more regular executions of society’s female murderers.
‘Prosecutors work hard to de-feminize a female defendant,’ says Professor Victor Streib of Cleveland University, ‘Lesbianism is one factor often referred to in female capital cases. In the Deep South, especially, lesbianism is abhorred. A woman who’s gay is more likely to get the death penalty than one who’s not. Prosecutors try to prove that the crime was in some way “macho”, performed by a monster. Then it’s easy to sell the jury on the idea that the best way to get rid of a monster is to kill it.’
Empathizing with women who are to be executed is an impossible task. The only ones who can accurately understand what a sentence of death is like, are the prisoners who have had their own sentences reversed. Debra Bracewell, thirty-five, was the first woman in recent times to be sent to Death Row in Alabama. She spent three years on the Row before having her sentence commuted to life without parole. Now, working at the laundry room at Tutwiler, she’s thankful.
‘When I was on Death Row,’ she explains timidly, ‘I thought about God a lot. I would pray about five hours a day and spend the rest of my time reading the Bible. There was no one for me to speak to. I was very lonely. I’ve lived here at Tutwiler for sixteen years. But this is not my home. I would never call this place my home.’
For Alabama’s five female Death Row inmates life is a routine of loneliness. Linda’s day begins at 4.30 a.m. when breakfast, like all meals, is brought to her cell.
‘This is the Row,’ says Linda. ‘No one’s going to do you any favours – they do what’s convenient for them, and feeding you in the middle of the night is convenient. Breakfast is grits and biscuits. I come from an affluent strata of society and was used to eating off nice china with fine cutlery. Suddenly, I had to get used to eating everything with a spoon. After breakfast I take a shower. I’m lucky to not only have the largest cell – it’s about eight feet by ten feet – but I have my own shower as well. I spend the morning reading
law books and working on my appeal. Then, at 9.30 a.m. lunch is served. Like most of the meals, it’s a mixture of various kinds of starch. They purposely feed you a lot of starch in jail; it’s cheap, makes you feel lethargic, slows brain activity and it’s fattening. I’m a health food person, at least I was till I arrived here.’
‘In the afternoon I do exercises in my cell, I do push-ups to keep limber. Sometimes I go to the chapel. As I’m in solitary I have to go when its free from other inmates. Most of the time I sit here at the small desk they gave me and I work on my legal defense. At 2.30 p.m. the “evening” meal is served… it’s usually just like lunch: starch.’
‘After dinner, there’s no other food until breakfast. In the afternoons I read, write letters to my family or talk to the guards. Lights are turned out at ten p.m. Death Row is a routine of boredom, but I force myself not to let my mind go blank.’
Despite the isolation and harsh routine, the female prisoners take great pride in looking their best. Make-up has a special value for women in prison, often to the point of being used as currency.
‘It’s very important for women’, says Helen Frick, an independent expert on the US prison system, ‘to look and feel feminine. Jail robs women of so many effeminate things. A simple stick of mascara, a lipstick or pot of nail-polish boosts morale and helps the Death Row inmates in particular to feel like women again.’
When sentenced to death, women tend to deal with the captivity differently from men.
‘They express their grief in their own feminine way,’ continues Frick. ‘There’s little of the physical anguish so often shown by men who’re incarcerated. Instead, women form tightly linked cliques – often with a mother figure presiding over the group. Women on the Row weep, pray and comfort each other when the existence becomes too much to bear. The bond between women sentenced to die is a strong one. Their unwavering support for each other helps them to endure the separation from their children.’
Tutwiler’s general inmates are given activities and training to prepare them for the outside world, but as little time or money as possible is invested in Death Row prisoners. If they are ever allowed to do work for the prison, they are only permitted pay of only a few dollars a month. Most of the time women on the Row are locked up and left to themselves, in solitude.
‘On male Death Rows,’ says Helen Frick, ‘there may be as many as three hundred inmates appealing their sentences, or awaiting execution. Some states have just one or two women on their Death Rows, which effectively assigns the prisoner to a life of solitary confinement.’
‘Here in isolation,’ says Linda Block as the screams of the insane prisoner echo through the hall, ‘the solitude is deadening. I feel forgotten by the world. The loneliest feeling on Earth is being a woman on Death Row in America – particularly in the South where women are still regarded as the gentle flower of mankind.’
‘It doesn’t shock people when a man is sentenced to death, because men are considered more violent in nature than women. But, in the public’s eye, women who have been condemned to death must be monsters – the antithesis of all that women are supposed to represent. As a woman on Death Row, waiting for the Yellow Mama, the electric chair, I am considered a traitor to my gender. Women like me are seen as an embarrassment to our nation. Society is appalled, yet confused. We may be despised, but the thought of killing a woman by electrocuting her is hard for most Americans. So we’re ignored, the forgotten part of the prison system. We’re never discussed and are rarely even thought of.’
In a state of limbo, America’s women on Death Row exist to die. The method of their execution depends on the state they’re in. Alabama only uses the electric chair. If executed, the women at Tutwiler, would be transported to the male Death Row at Holman Prison. The state has only one electric chair. While many states now offer lethal injection, some still employ hanging, the gas chamber or, as in Utah and in some military court-martials, the firing squad can still be used. Lethal injection is becoming the preferred method of execution with authorities, primarily because it is cheap and reliable.
After a sedative has been administered, Potassium chloride is injected through and intravenous drip into each arm. There is no doubt that lethal injection, which was first introduced in 1982, is more merciful than the chair or the gas chamber. Executions by these other methods rarely entail sedating the condemned person. Both electrocutions and gassings have regularly ended in botched executions. The chair kills by sending two thousand volts surging through the body, causing the prisoner’s eyeballs to explode as it does so. In some states, such as Virginia, members of the public can volunteer to watch executions. There are always far more volunteers than there are seats in the execution room.
Sitting in her cell, uncertain whether she is to die or live, Linda Block is adamant on how she would want to be killed.
‘I’m violently opposed to electrocution,’ she says resolutely. ‘The chair is such an indignant method. If my case comes to it, I would opt for the firing squad. There is more dignity in that. If I am going to be killed for something that I feel I’m not guilty of, I want to be standing up when I die. I want to be facing my executioner, to die with all the dignity I can.’
‘As far as the state is concerned women on Death Row are America’s living dead,’ says George Kendall of the Legal Defense Fund. The state wants to put no resources into them, except to keep them alive to kill them.’
Kendall has been present at a number of electrocutions in several states. He campaigns to have the chair abolished, along with the lurid, almost medieval trappings that accompany it.
‘Electrocutions are horrific,’ he explains, ‘because you’re literally cooking the person. They’re always done in the middle of the night. First, the head and the lower right leg are shaved to ensure a good connection between the electrode and the skin. Shaving the head also prevents the hair from catching fire during the electrocution process. Six burly guards place the inmate into the chair and tie down the straps. If the convict struggles, he or she has no chance of escape. An electrode cap is fitted to their bald head, and other electrodes are attached to the shaved right leg. After the inmate has been given the opportunity of making a last statement, a mask is put over their face so you won’t see it contort as they die. Without any warning,’ continues Kendall, ‘the executioner hits the button.’
In recent years several of highly-publicized female capital cases have gone through the courts. The case of Susan Smith, who drowned her two children in South Carolina, shocked America. Three years before that Aileen Wuornos – the only woman regarded by the FBI as a serial-killer – was convicted for murdering at least seven men in Florida. But, as heinous crimes such as these steal the limelight, the majority of women sentenced to death are sent to the Row for killing their husbands after years of abuse.
Guinevere Garcia, thirty-five, a tall, slim woman with dark curly hair, was sentenced to Death Row in Illinois in 1992. Like many the Row’s forgotten women, Guinevere’s story begins in childhood. Aged only six, a male member of her family raped her repeatedly. The identity of the rapist was never disclosed in the trial. Guinevere was brought up by her grandmother after her own mother committed suicide when she was raped by the same man. At eleven years old she started to drink heavily; then at fourteen she was raped by five men. Not long after, she was forced by her grandfather to marry an illegal alien in a sham marriage. But it was her second husband, whom she had met while working as a prostitute, that she shot after his continual beatings.
Now resigned to the fact that she is to be killed by the state, Guinevere Garcia waits in Room Six of Death Row at the Dwight Correctional Centre – one of the country’s most modern Death Rows. She has asked that her appeal be dropped and that she be executed as soon as possible. She waits for the pinprick of a needle puncturing the skin, for the lethal injection to end the purgatory.
Many of the women who have made it to America’s most disreputable address claim to have committed murder out of
fear. Such killings divide society. Support groups declare that dozens of women are killed each year for not fulfilling their abusive husbands’ commands. But, particularly in the traditional heartlands of the South, pro-death penalty lobby groups stir the public’s animosity. And when sordid crimes are involved, it’s perhaps not hard to understand the calls for revenge.
The catalogue of crimes committed by women on Death Row includes the case of Deirdre Hunt. She was instructed by her boyfriend to kill a nineteen-year-old man in Florida. Having bound him to a tree, she shot three .22 calibre bullets into his chest. As she fired the semiautomatic pistol, fitted with a silencer, her boyfriend videotaped the killing. Then, as the boy lay slouched, gasping for breath, Deirdre Hunt is said to have grabbed him by the hair and shot him in the head with an AK-47.
In another case, Frances Newton – a petite, reserved woman from Houston, Texas – was convicted of shooting her husband and children (aged two years and seven years) while they slept. Newton, who was sentenced to Death Row, aged twenty-two, was found guilty of murdering her family in order to claim the $100,000 insurance policy.
In the second wing of Tutwiler Prison’s Death Row, Warden Lobmiller is doing her rounds.
‘I control the majority of things which occur in the lives of the Death Row inmates,’ she says. ‘I do not have a friendship with them. They are merely acquaintances. If one of the Death Row women was executed, I would not feel remorse: rather, I think I’d be happy for her. It might be shocking to say that – but if I was one of those individuals, that’s what I would want.’
Like most women who have made it to the Row, Linda Block ponders death with meticulous attention.