January 25, 1980, midnight
The first execution I attended wasn’t by lethal injection but by Old Sparky. That’s what they affectionately call the electric chair at Raiford Penitentiary in the northeast part of Florida. It was in 1980, a few years after the death penalty was reinstated across the country. They had come up with the lethal injection cocktail by that time, but you were allowed to choose your method of dying.
I had nothing to do with catching the guy who was to be executed. The man who brought me there was a mentor who was dubbed Wooly Bully by the rest of my class at Quantico. With his full white beard, he was what Santa Claus would be like if Santa Claus was a son of a bitch. He said this should be part of my criminal justice education, that I should witness what you might think of as the final result of what I did for a living. Rookie though I was, it wasn’t lost on me that I was the only agent brought here, and one of the first women hired by the FBI. That was when they made jokes like On the way to a bust, the male agents check their guns, and the female agents check their lipstick.
Call it hazing. Call it sexist. You can call it a field trip for all I care.
“The witnesses are now entering the witness room,” I heard a voice say, and it continued throughout the entire event, like a macabre master of ceremonies.
We entered and sat in wooden pews, facing a room with glass partitions. Beyond the glass was a sturdy wooden chair, straps dangling from the arms, and straps hooked to the front legs. A metal cap was suspended like a halo over all. Two journalists were there as well. Another man sat by himself one pew ahead of us and to the right.
My mentor pointed to the man and whispered, “That guy? He’s the father. The guy about to die killed his two kids.” I could feel him looking at me from the corner of his eye. He leaned back and crossed his arms over his belly like he was about to enjoy telling a child he wouldn’t get the football he wanted.
He had already explained to me how three executioners would be standing in a room off the execution chamber, each tasked to press a button that would deliver two thousand volts of current for three seconds, one thousand volts for seven seconds, and two hundred and fifty volts for fifteen seconds. The mechanism was set to deliver the current randomly from only one of the buttons. None of the three men assigned to deliver the current would know which button actually did it.
The warden’s assistant stood by the window; I could see his face peering in and his lips moving as he reported everything he saw. His job was to stay on the phone with the commissioner, to report what was happening and to be alerted should there be a last-second stay of execution. There was always that dramatic anticipation of the final moment when the call would come in to stop the procedure.
Not this time.
The commentary, delivered in a sober yet matter-of-fact tone, defused the drama of the scene as much as it could. As if the actors wanted to convince the audience that the play was not real.
“The date is January 25, 1980. The time is now 12:13 A.M.”
Why midnight, I wondered. What the hell difference does it make?
“The condemned man has been escorted from the holding cell into the execution chamber. He appears to be passive, and after some hesitation has seated himself in the chair. The guards have secured the straps around his arms and legs. Do you have any final words?”
The man in the chair had a round face and puffy eyes. He looked out through the window at us and said, “I’m sorry, Frank. I take it back.” As if Frank would say Okay, then, never mind. He tried to say more but only succeeded in making an absurd sound like the mewling of a cat, and he gave up.
The man sitting to our right and one pew ahead of us, who I figured was Frank, stared without comment.
The master of ceremonies went on. “These are the final words. Would you like to pray?”
The man’s lips moved over and over in the same phrase, the words barely audible, the words hardly a prayer. “Going to hell. Going to hell. Going to hell. Going to hell.” He might have continued like this forever if the executioners hadn’t decided to move the agenda along.
“The assistants are now placing wet sponges on his head and his legs. This seems to have agitated the prisoner. One assistant wipes his forehead, either from perspiration or an excess of water running into his eyes. They are now securing a cloth over the man’s head. Now they are placing a metal cap over his head and strapping it in place. The prisoner is trembling violently. The assistants have exited the room.
“The time is now 12:19 A.M. Permission requested to proceed with execution.
“Permission to proceed granted.
“Phase one. The body has gone rigid, seeming to rise above the surface of the chair for the seconds of voltage administered. There was a popping sound, which we thought was one of the bands breaking, but appears to be caused by the suddenly charged water. His hands are grasping the arms of the chair.
“Phase two. The body has already relaxed. I think we have a successful process this time.
“Phase three. No other condition to report. Current ceased.
“We are now into lapse time. He doesn’t appear to be breathing.
“Four minutes.”
Certainly the man’s body was still and slumped, held in place by the cuffs on his arms and the metal cap strapped to his head.
“Three minutes.”
None of us in the witness room moved. I think I remember breathing, but I couldn’t vouch for anyone else.
“Two minutes.
“One minute.
“The medical examiner has now entered the room and is checking for signs of life. The medical examiner reports the condemned has expired on this date at 12:33 A.M. The warden has reported this execution to the commissioner, and we have been told job well done. The warden answered that it was a team effort and we were ready for the next one.”
“So. What do you think, Jane Wayne?” my mentor asked.
I didn’t mind that nickname as much as I minded Dickless Tracy. I rubbed the corner of my mouth where a nerve jumped. One person, somewhere, laughed.
We stayed for the autopsy, which was not my first, but the first I had witnessed from death by electrocution. It seems absurd to autopsy a man you’ve watched die, but it’s part of the formal record keeping to which humans are so tied, perhaps in an attempt to protest that we are human after all.
I had been told there would be “some burn marks” at the site where the current entered. That was correct. The back of his right leg looked and smelled like pork after ten minutes under a broiler, and the top of his scalp was burned down to his skull. When the top of the skull was lifted, cranial hemorrhaging was noted in the record. Urine was taken to determine whether the man had been given drugs before execution, but none were found.
Manner of death: homicide by electrocution.
Homicide is what they put on the death certificate. That means one person killing another under any circumstances, although in this case sanctioned under the law.
Cause of death: cardiac failure.
It’s a hard way to go, and not an easy thing to watch. Do you have any idea what it feels like to sit very still in what looks like a church pew and do nothing while a stranger dies violently fifteen feet away? To carefully control all your muscles that are getting messages fired from your brain to stop death? To tamp down that urge to do something. To save.
Many people in criminal justice are opposed to the death penalty because they know better than anyone else the flaws of judgment, science, or law that can lead to a wrongful conviction. As for me, people joke sometimes about how vicious I am, how I support the death penalty to the extent that if I could I would make traffic offenses capital crimes. Well, I confess there were two times in my life, years later, when I relished watching someone die, one by my own hand. And for some I’d be pleased to pull the switch myself. But as a routine event, execution is more like putting down a sick animal. There’s no pleasure in it, no thrills, only a kind of disgust that makes you cleave to a precise script from which you can detach yourself. You make yourself an actor in a theatrical drama someone else has written.
Yes, but can you take it, Brigid Quinn? Sure, I can take it. I tamped it down real good.
That’s what an execution is like. It’s what I witnessed thirty-five years ago, what I remember of every sight, and sound, and smell, like it was yesterday. I didn’t want to know that man’s complete story. I wasn’t even sure he was competent. Having known some creatures that simply need to be put down, I’m not against the death penalty by any means. But anyone out there who ever suggests I get a morbid thrill from it, fuck you.