There is something uniquely surreal about sitting in a death row cell watching your television as virtually every local station out of Jacksonville and Gainesville all cover the “Countdown To An Execution” live from outside the prison.
It’s a circus of its own peculiar morbid design but fortunately seldom seen. The parade of pretty people in front of their camera’s telling the story of the soon to be killed killer doesn’t come in droves except when someone of special status is to be executed.
Today it is the infamous Danny Rolling, a pathetic man in his own right who had pled guilty to five murders in the Gainesville area a dozen years ago. That entitled him to being labeled a “serial killer” and those killing not only defined his life but also will now define his meticulously and deliberately inflicted death.
What does that say about us? Have we really come that far from the days when we gathered outside local county courthouses to watch a public hanging in the town square? Or even a midnight lynching at an old oak tree?
Thanks top the media the ritual of execution is now carried to out living rooms. The bleached blonde reporters will walk you through it, all competing with each other to provide a graphic description of the moments leading up to that execution and as the clock ticks down they will hold your attention by telling you to watch the backdoor of the wing housing the death chamber as once the execution has been carried a prison employee will appear at that door and wave a towel, a white towel, signifying that the execution has now been carried out. For long moments the viewer will watch in silent anticipation, waiting for that sign yet another person has been put to death.
Although disgusted by the pathetic circus, I watch too. I had a personal connection as I knew Danny Rolling – I lived in close proximity to him for many years. Perhaps I knew him netter than any of them now congregated at the prison to watch him die. I never knew him as a killer – I knew him as a fellow inmate. I didn’t judge him by acts of momentary violence against innocent victims, but by years of interaction, seeing him as a person with obvious mental issues and personality flaws. In my world we all have issues –I’ve been on death row now for so long that my issues have developed issues of their own.
Did I mention that I’m disgusted by the spectacle the media is making of this? How can we not be disgusted by the organized and intentional celebration of the death of another human being? What does it say about us as a society when we gather around to watch another man being deliberately put to death?
After the circus is over will any of his victims be brought back to life? What exactly is accomplished by putting the man to death? Certainly by now we know that these so called serial killers feed off public attention, so doesn’t all this attention only inspire other pathetic losers to gain their own fame by killing even more? Is it just a coincidence that the increase in the number of “serial killers” corresponds directly with the increase of the public attention we provide them? Take away their spotlight and what motivation will be left? By making a media circus of Danny Rolling’s execution today. How many more innocent people will die at the hands of other serial killers out to gain their fame?
Here’s another thought… when was the last time you saw these swarms of media trucks gather outside a prison to cover the release of an innocent man? Since we cranked up the killing machine in recent years there’s been over 130 men and women exonerated and released from death row after being wrongfully convicted and condemned to death. When was the last time you saw the media gather at the gates of a prison to cover the release of an innocent man? In 23 years I’ve never seen it – not even once.
We accept serial killers are “sick,” but are we not as equally sick by wanting to watch them be methodically put to death? As we celebrate their death aren’t we doing the same thing we’ve condemned them to death for? How many of us have ever shown the same level of interest in advocating the release of an innocent man as we do in advocating the death of a presumably guilty man?
Today “We the people” put Danny Rolling to death and many celebrated by participating in the media circus that covered every detail. But where will these people be tomorrow when yet another innocent man walks out of prison alone and already forgotten? What does that say about us? Every circus has its clowns – today “We the people” became the clowns.
Did you hear of how he actually sang a Christian gospel song as his final statement? It's hard to deal with the freaking circus they make of it -- it's all so one sided as the media competes to come up with the best sound bite to graphically portray the death of a "monster." Even if we were to assume that he was a monster, maybe we should ask what it was or who created that monster? And what is the difference between him stalking his victims and those who make careers out stalking the death of condemned men and women? Are not both ultimately defined by the end result -- they brought about, by deliberate design and intent, the death of another human being.
When "we, the people" killed Danny Rolling it only made monsters out of all of us as we ultimately did the very same things we condemned him to death for. Only we made our victim suffer under the threat of inevitable death for years and being in solitary confinement awaiting the uncertainty of your fate really is a lot like having a gun held to your head.
Just so you don't get too comfortable with that, with each new appeal you build up the hope of a reprieve as if the gun might just be lifted, but instead the courts deny you -- as if they're recocking the gun and pulling the trigger like a game of Russian roulette. When they pull the trigger at the end of that next appeal, will that be the round that kills you? Or will it be the next one?
It's really the prolonged uncertainty that describes why capital punishment is "cruel and unusual" as if that Constitutional concept even has any meaning in our contemporary society.
Michael Lambrix
Return to my main blog
Check out my website www.southerninjustice.net
Showing posts with label death watch experience. Show all posts
Showing posts with label death watch experience. Show all posts
Tuesday, 3 February 2009
Monday, 5 January 2009
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
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
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