Executioners

by Phil Clarke

  Chamber of Horrors

  Despite many rigorous and strictly followed proce­dures, many errors have occurred, leading to widespread doubt that this method of execution is humane or merciful. One of the first took place during the chamber’s formative years with the double execu­tion of Pete Catalina and Angelo Agnes in 1939. It was claimed by the prison officials to be the quickest and most humane execution they had ever conducted. The truth was that the gas chamber leaked lethal fumes during the process, causing the witnesses to flee in horror!

  On 18 July 1949, Leanderess Riley, a one-eyed, hearing-impaired thief, shot a man named Walter Hills in the back while making his getaway from an armed robbery in Sacramento. Barely breaking 1.5 metres (5 feet) and weighing a slight 56 kilograms (124 pounds), Riley cut a sorry figure at his trial, but his guilt was undeniable and he was scheduled to die in the gas chamber on 25 August 1950. However, the execution was delayed by some years as the appointed doctors assigned to determine the sanity of the prosecuted could not agree on his mental state. The court hearing that followed voted in favour of the death sentence for the diminutive Riley, and he soon found himself in his own private concrete death-cell waiting for the chamber to be prepared. When the sun came up on Riley’s last day and the prison guards came for him, he was found clutching the bars of his cell, crying with fear. He struggled and screamed all the way to the chamber and the officials had considerable trouble strapping Riley in to the chair. Twice the petite prisoner managed to pull free from his bindings. The second time occurred after the lever had been pulled to create the chemical reaction. This allowed the spectators to witness Leanderess, with his hands over his face, trying in vain to prevent the fumes from taking him. He died at 10.16 a.m. on 20 February 1953.

  Seven years later, one of the most clear-cut signs that the method was flawed came with the execution of Caryl Whittier Chessman. Chessman became known as the Red Light Bandit after he was found guilty of impersonating a policeman and shining a red light into parked cars before physically attacking the passengers within. His death sentence was a highly controversial one. At the time there was a ruling known as the Little Lindbergh law of 1933, stating that any conviction which involved kidnapping with bodily harm should receive the death penalty. The prosecution at Chessman’s trial claimed that when Chessman dragged his victims out of their vehicles to sexually assault and kill them, this was effectively kidnap. The judge and jury agreed, and the Red Light Bandit was sent to San Quentin where he spent twelve years on Death Row. He filed numerous self-prepared appeals and successfully avoided eight execution dates until Governor Edmund Brown refused him a ninth.

  Chessman’s execution was fixed for 2 May 1960, before which he informed the press that he would nod his head if he suffered any pain from the inhalation of lethal asphyxiate. He was strapped into one of the two chairs inside the chamber as all eyes remained fixed on the reaction of the condemned. The lever was pulled, and the sodium cyanide pellets dropped into the sulphuric acid, setting in motion an irreversible sequence of events. The sixty witnesses present watched as the prisoner was seen to nod his head several times as he unwillingly inhaled the lethal fumes. There it was: the abolitionist’s first-person proof – albeit from a career criminal – that the gas chamber inflicted pain upon those unlucky enough to experience it. Still it was over thirty years before California called time on the gas chamber, allowing more examples of botched executions to occur. Robert Pierce and Smith E. Jordan were found guilty of killing a taxi driver from Oakland. On the day of their executions Jordan was found in his holding cell spurting blood from a self-inflicted wound to the neck. Rather than delay the proceed­ings, the prison guards made a makeshift bandage from a prison shirt and he was dragged, kicking and screaming to the chamber. The attending witnesses looked on in horror as Pierce, still bleeding profusely from the neck, wrenched his right arm free from the straps as the cloud of killer gas enveloped him. Thankfully, the hydrogen cyanide fulfilled its purpose before Pierce was able to free his remaining hand, sparing the spectators from further wild gestures and gesticulations.

  In Mississippi on 2 September 1983, Jimmy Lee Gray, who had been sentenced to death for the rape and murder of three-year-old Deressa Jean Seales, died not because of the deadly gas filling his lungs, but through banging his head against a metal pole inside the chamber. The horror show took more than eight minutes to bring down the convicted killer, and was met with such disdain by the witnesses that officials had to clear the viewing area. Rumour has it that the reason for this inefficient display came down to the executioner, Barry Bruce, who was drunk on duty. Less than ten years later, in Arizona, Donald Eugene Harding took over six and a half minutes to succumb to the hydrogen cyanide. Throughout this time, the prisoner was seen by the onlookers to spasm uncontrollably, his body turning red and purple, which so repulsed the witnesses that many com­plained later of post-traumatic disorders.

  The End of the Gas Chamber

  The 1990s saw the number of inmates gassed dwindle. David Edwin Mason met his maker in a cloud of lethal fumes in San Quentin on 24 August 1994 for the murders of four elderly women some fourteen years previous, yet soon after this California stopped using the gas chamber. This move was prompted by the American Civil Liberties Union, which accused the state’s Depart­ment of Corrections of violating the constitution by applying cruel and unusual punish­ment upon 375 prisoners with capital convictions. This accusation was heard before Judge Marilyn Hall Patel in San Francisco, who agreed with the Union on 5 October 1994 and ruled the gas chamber was in breach of human rights. If there was any doubt as to the propriety of this decision, a panel of three judges at the Court of Appeals unanimously upheld the ruling two years later on 21 February 1996. Three years later, in Arizona, the most recent execution using the gas chamber occurred. The victim was Walter LaGrand – a German national – chose these fading fumes over lethal injection as a protest against the death penalty and, befitting the antiquated and flawed technique, took a lengthy eighteen minutes to die.

  As well as the humane costs, the gas chamber had become financially untenable. Many of Eaton Metal’s chambers were now more than seventy years old and were in dire need of new parts or total replacement. The seals, essential for the safety of the witnesses and staff, were hardening and they were in danger of leaking. Rather than refit these cubicles with new seals, the authorities began to favour lethal injection. This is not surprising, considering the cost of building a brand new chamber today is approximately $300,000. As yet, no death-row inmate has requested the gas chamber in the twenty-first century. While it remains a legal alternative to the needle, these old ramshackle rooms of ruin wait patiently in five states around the country for another ill-fated visitor to sit upon their perforated chairs and inhale.

  PART ELEVEN: LETHAL INJECTION

  Lethal Injection

  The United States has always endeavoured to adopt the most humane method of execution the age had to offer. The electric chair was seen as an improvement to the gallows and the gas chamber was preferred by many of its states as a merciful alternative to the chair. With the same objective, they arrived at the most recent means to an end: lethal injection. A far cleaner and quieter method of despatch, this harmful hit is now the most common form of capital punishment in the country, with thirty-seven of the thirty-eight ‘death states’ offering it as an option. Only Nebraska abstained in favour of the electric chair.

  Lethal injection was first discussed in the late nineteenth century as a result of considerable advances made in medicine. Julius Mount Bleyer, a doctor from New York, advocated its use as a more humane alternative in 1888, but he failed in his bid to see it used in his lifetime. The invention of electricity stole the limelight, and indeed the right to replace the gallows. It was not until a full century later that lethal injection at last outshone Edison’s creation.

  The reason for its resurgence in the late 1970s came down to abolitionists insisting that electrocution and gassing were cruel and un
usual in their technique and, therefore, violated the eighth amend­ment of the American constitution. The supreme court case of Furman vs Georgia brought an immediate cessation of all American executions in 1972, while authorities debated and deliberated on the legality of electro­cution as a means for capital punishment.

  There was immense pressure on all the death states to discover a new and improved system. In Oklahoma, state representative and Republican William J. Wiseman was seeking help from medical experts to unearth a much-needed replacement. Not only had the electric chair fallen out of public favour there, but the Oklahoma model was also in dire need of repair – thus providing a financial incentive to finding a fresh method of execution! However, Wiseman met with disapproval from the Oklahoma Medical Association, which felt any participation by those that had sworn the Hippocratic Oath stating ‘never to do harm’ would be impossible.

  When all seemed lost, Wiseman received a call from Jay Chapman, the state’s medical examiner. Chapman had invaluable experience of executions, having been present at many in the neigh­bouring state of Colorado. He had witnessed first-hand the grisly horrors of electrocution and was, therefore, keen to assist any with search for an alternative. He upheld Bleyer’s original claim that injection of a lethal formula would provide a humane method of execu­tion. What Chapman did not possess was any solid pharmacological training, but he would be the man to invent a procedure of execution that has seen the death of hundreds of people and still is very much in existence to this day.

  Chapman dictated to Wiseman how he saw the basic procedure of taking a life by lethal injection. This became known as Chapman’s Protocol. He advo­cated an intravenous saline drip placed in the arm of the prisoner, through which a fast-acting barbiturate should be injected. This was followed by a shot of a drug with paralytic properties. Chapman’s protocol was given suitable backing by Doctor Stanley Deutsch, the then head of Oklahoma Medical School’s Anaesthesiology Department, and Wiseman quickly had the lethal injection bill passed by the state legislature.

  In fact, Oklahoma was not the first state to apply this new technique. The day after Wiseman had successfully passed the bill in Oklahoma, Texas followed suit. It would provide the location for the first lethal injection in the United States. On 7 December 1982, Charles Brooks was led into the death chamber at the Huntsville Unit of the State Prison and was injected with a lethal dose of barbiturate, becoming the needle’s first victim and the first execution in Texas since 1964.

  The prisoner given the dubious honour of this drug debut was a convicted murderer hailing from Fort Worth, who had been found guilty (along with his partner, Woody Loudres) of kidnapping mechanic David Gregory. They bound and gagged him in a motel room before shooting him in the head at point- blank range, and for this Brooks was given the death penalty. A stay of execution was denied and after a last meal of steak and chips followed by peach cobbler, the prisoner was prepared for execution. Having converted to Islam while incarcerated, Brooks said a prayer to Allah before the drugs were pumped into his bloodstream at 12.09 a.m. He was pro­nounced dead seven minutes later in what proved to be a reasonably efficient affair, devoid of first night nerves. This success suggested that a bright future was in store for lethal injection. The practice was eagerly snapped up by other states – twenty-seven legislatures had adopted the new method by 1994 and a further ten states had adopted it by 2004.

  The Procedure

  Chapman’s Protocol forms the basis of a much simpler practice than that found with the gas chamber, and the use of needles ensures a more medical environ­ment than that of the electric chair or indeed the gallows. Witnesses need not fear shocking skin dis­coloration or 30-centimetre (1-foot) high flames shooting up from the heads of the victims. The new method promised to be a far more civilised than its predecessors.

  The prisoner is afforded his choice of last meal and is visited by a spiritual advisor while he waits for the officials to arrive. Then the prison’s personnel fix heart monitors to the body of the condemned and strap him or her into a gurney, or trolley. A drip or cannula is then inserted into a suitable vein in the arm with a second put in the other arm as a back-up in case the primary line fails. This part of the procedure often proves difficult as many a convict cannot provide a healthy vein thanks to serious drug abuse.

  The patient-cum-prisoner is then wheeled into the death chamber invariably covered from neck to toe in a white sheet. The drips are linked up to tubes leading into an ante chamber, which is separated by a wall or curtain from where the actual execution takes place. It is from here that the technicians will administer the doses.

  Currently, the sequence of drugs is manually injected into the condemned, but this has not always been the case. In 1979, Fred Leuchter invented an automatic, computer-controlled device which, by a system of syringes, plungers and pistons, was able to administer the correct doses at specific intervals. It comprised of two modules. The control module with its on/off switch was duplicated, to hide the true identity of the executioner. The delivery module contained a series of syringes filled with the deadly doses and saline solution, which was used to flush out the intravenous tubes between each stage. It proved highly successful and was first bought by New Jersey. In total, seventeen states purchased a Leuchter machine; each one was built in the basement of the inventor’s house. However, the bubble burst on this successful invention when, in 1990, Leuchter testified on behalf of Holocaust denier, Ernst Zundel, during which his lack of training was revealed. With only a Bachelor of Arts to his name, Leuchter had no scientific nor pharmacological training and this revelation saw many states dispose of the machine.

  Once the prisoner is in place, bound to the gurney and fully connected to the ante chamber, up to three injections of fast-acting drugs are allowed to flow in through the drip inserted into the arm. The first drug dispatched is sodium thiopental also known as sodium pentothal, which is an anaesthetic used in surgical operations. However, rather than the usual dose of between 3 and 5 milligrams per kilogram, (causing a loss of consciousness in less than forty-five seconds) the prisoner is given a 5-gram dose in order to ensure a complete coma state.

  The second injection follows soon after an inter­mediate saline flush. The second stage sees the prisoner’s muscles paralysed, thanks to a 100-milligram dose of a drug called pancuronium bromide, or Pavulon. In some states, this jab is considered enough to do the job, as the dose can result in the collapse of the diaphragm bringing death by asphyxiation. In other states, a third injection is required to complete the execution. A lethal dose of potassium chloride is then administered to the prisoner in order to force a cardiac arrest. Known as an electrolyte – a solution that conducts electricity – the drug raises the electrical charge of the heart cells, rendering the heart unable to contract.

  Whether two or three injections are used, the execution should last anything between seven and eleven minutes with death being pronounced within twenty minutes of the first injection. However, not all execu­tions using this new method managed to achieve this average and not all prisoners went as peacefully as Charles Brooks in Huntsville, Texas. Since its first use in 1982, the three-dose practice has come under fire for being unnecessarily cruel. Many believe the legally required death of the inmate could just as easily be obtained by one single dose of barbiturate, negating the need for the second and third injections that are considered to cause immense pain. An overdose of sodium thiopental would mean that the prisoner would simply slip into a coma and eventually stop breathing. However, this one-shot deal is fraught with difficulties. Using a single drug to kill the prisoner would mean the injected inmate could take up to forty-five minutes to expire. During this time, without the pancuronium bromide to paralyse the muscles, the prisoner would be prone to involuntary muscle jerks that could disturb the witnesses. Currently, the single-injection method has yet to be used, and the relevant states prefer to stick to a sequence of two or three drugs.

  Poor Shots

  While ther
e is much evidence to suggest that injecting a series of deadly chemicals into a prisoner’s bloodstream is the most humane method of execu­tion yet discovered, there have been many examples to indicate that this clean and clinical form of execution is actually far from humane.

  There are oppotunities for error throughout the procedure, and consequently potential for inflicting pain on the prisoner. Firstly, the personnel respon­sible often lack expertise necessary for properly injecting the deadly doses. In any other scenario involving the use of these drugs, highly trained doctors would be in charge. However, because the practice of lethal injection is concerned with taking a life, it clearly contravenes the Hippocratic oath. For this reason, the American Medical Association (AMA) forbid their members from participating. This means that there exists a greater chance of error, as potentially less-qualified staff are required to do the job. The injection process is not just a case of pressing a plunger. Each dose of every drug used must be tailored to each inmate. Too small a dose of sodium thiopental runs the risk of an early return to con­scious­ness, and thanks to the paralytic properties of pancuronium bromide, the prisoner would likely suffer immense pain yet appear calm and at peace. While in this deceptively serene state, the condemned would be prone to asphyxia and, when the final fix of potassium chloride was introduced, intense muscle cramps and burning sensations would occur.

  One of the first examples of a flawed injection process occurred on 14 March 1984 in Texas, when David James Autry was wheeled into the execution chamber inside the state prison. With such an auspicious start to the method two years previously, the execution of this convicted murderer came as a shock and brought doubt upon the efficacy of the practice. The prison officials in charge of the affair were unable to bring the prisoner into a state of complete unconsciousness. The first two doses reacted with one another to form a solid, which restricted the flow into Autry’s blood­stream. He was seen to suffer for the duration of the execution which lasted a full ten minutes.