Facing my own execution.

Even as difficult as it is to reflect upon the memories of the many I’ve come to know that have now been put to death , it is the memory of my own imminent execution that remains the hardest of all to talk about. For many years after coming within hours of my own execution, I built up a wall around me; deliberately pushing anyone who dared to get too close away as my own emotional emptiness all but overwhelmed me. As the years passed I began to receive psychiatric care and ever increasing doses of anti-depressant drugs to get through the days – but it was the long nights of lying awake in a cold sweat afraid to fall asleep for fear of the nightmares that tormented me the most.

How do I describe my personal experience of being taken from my solitary cell, physically hand-cuffed and shackled and chained like a rabid dog, then silently paraded down the long main corridor of Florida State Prison and unceremoniously delivered to the warden’s office, and ordered to then stand before him, and as I felt my own knees tremble and grow weak beneath me, with cold and callous indifference the warden read the black-bordered “death warrant” to me; calmly advising me that the day and the hour of my own execution had now been scheduled.

How do I recount the overwhelming sense of hopelessness and abandonment as I was then slowly paraded back down that long corridor, both my body and mind now numb, until we reached the very end at the solid steel door of “Q-wing” (also known as X-wing), and then down a flight of stairs to the very bottom floor that housed the “death watch” cells – and just beyond them, the death chamber itself. I was then placed in cell #2, between Robert Teffeteller and Amos King. The three if us would then spend the next 8 weeks alone together as our lawyers fought to win a stay of execution. We remained on “death watch” as only a few feet away they executed Jeff Daugherty, and then as Ronald Woods and Leo Jones came within hours, each of us wondering if we might be next. But first Bob Teffeteller got a stay of execution – only to die later of cancer. Then Amos King and I were moved around to phase II cells immediately adjacent to the room with the electric chair. Amos won a stay of execution next only to be executed years later. I alone remained on “death watch,” as the days drew down to hours.

As required by established “execution protocol,” once I was within 24 hours of scheduled execution, the designated execution team was required to perform a “mock execution” to make sure the electric chair was functioning properly. Although separated by a steel door, I could hear their voices as they “walked” through the mock execution, and as I sat on my bunk with my feet on the concrete floor — as they repeatedly tested “Old Sparky” I could physically feel each massive surge and yet I was unable to simply lift my feet from the floor.

A few hours later I was again shackled and chained and ordered to stand before the Assistant warden, as an unknown individual meticulously measured me for the state provided “suit” they intended to use only to kill, then bury me in. Then with indescribably surreal detachment, I struggled to recall my favorite foods as another prison official impatiently waited to write down what I wanted for my “last meal,” and only then did I again sit down in the solitude of my death watch cell and silently pray that, that last meal would never come.

With growing anxiety I struggled to not count down the final hours as the hour of my own execution grew nearer. As if to meticulously taunt me, the clock on the wall above the death watch sergeant’s deck tolled increasingly louder with each eternal second, echoing again and again in the numbness of my consciousness. Desperately trying to distract myself from my own impending death, I would all but involuntarily leap to the cell bars each time the nearby phone would ring, hoping that, that would be the call to stay my execution – and with each disappointment silently begging, then cursing, the God that had seemingly abandoned me in the hour of my need, and would allow the unjustified execution of yet another innocent. In my mind, with my execution set for early the next morning, I knew that the courts would close and the judges all go home by late afternoon. I told myself they had to grant a stay by 5:00 p.m. that day, but then 5:00 p.m. passed. With each passing movement a part of me died as I confronted the growing certainty of my own inevitable fate. Although physically and mentally exhausted, I could not sleep and I methodically paced back and forth like a restless animal in a cage, deliberately counting out each step out loud in a failed effort to drown out the incessant thundering of each click of the clock on the wall.

Then, at long last, that call I had so anxiously awaited came, but then in what can only be described as the most cruelest of in humane acts imaginable, as if maliciously wanting to taunt and break me, I was told that by a 4 to 3 vote, the Florida Supreme Court had rejected my appeal, and granted only a 48 hour “temporary” stay of execution to allow my lawyers to appeal to the Federal CourtIn a brief moment of illusory reprieve, the state pulled the gun from my head and told me they’d be back to kill me later. Then just as quickly, callously cocked the gun again and told me I would now die.

This is the insidious insanity of the game of state sanctioned Russian roulette, as they uncompassionately turned back the hands of the clock that counted down my final hours – and told me to start counting it down again. Tick, tick, tick… each eternal second ticked away until another long night of restless exhaustion and anxiety of my uncertain fate slowly passed, then the hours of yet another long day with no word. On the early evening of my second scheduled execution the prison arranged for a “final visit” with my family – but no one came. Just as much as I was condemned to live alone, so too would I die alone.

As an act of unexpected compassion, I was allowed a phone call to my family, and my father answered the phone. Allowed only a moment to speak, I struggled to tell him that the state court denied my appeal, and it didn’t look like I would make it. Then I heard silence, then the phone crashed to the floor, and a moment later my teenage sister came on the line, and hysterically told me that Dad had just collapsed and she had to hang the phone up to call an ambulance. I never even got to say goodbye. As if an even greater weight had come crashing down upon me, I laid on my bunk in a fetal position facing the wall, never before, and never again feeling so completely alone and overwhelmed.

Sometime a few hours later a Federal Judge granted an “indefinite” stay of execution, and I was told that I would immediately be moved from “death watch.” Then, in the late evening of Thursday December 1, 1988 – only hours from my second scheduled execution in as many days – I climbed each step that led up from death watch and the execution chamber, and with each step I felt a great weight being lifted from me. I had confronted my own death and at least temporarily defeated it, and now felt almost glad that I was being returned to my regular solitary death row cell, among the many others that are also condemned. I was still alive – but equally so I remained condemned to a prolonged and indefinite living death.

Michael Lambrix
Florida Death Row

Return to my main blog

Check out my website www.southerninjustice.net