Robert Gleason had waited long for this moment, and he took a perverse pleasure in it. He grinned as he was led into the small cinder-block room at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarrett, Virginia, and looked at the window behind which he knew the observers—including the mother of one of his victims—were watching. The blue curtain was drawn back and he could see them, as they could see him. To hell with them—this was his hour.
He winked at his spiritual adviser who was with the group behind the blue curtain. Tim “Bam Bam” Spradling was a former biker buddy turned preacher. He nodded grimly back at the convict.
The execution room was dominated by a plain oak chair, large and solid like a throne. The rich red wood had the patina of age; the chair was over a hundred years old. The fittings were of polished brass, but the black leather straps looked ominous.
Gleason, burly and heavily bearded but with his head shaven for the occasion, was led over to the chair and he sat down, giving a thumbs-up as he settled. He was wearing flip-flops and dark blue prison pants, with the right leg cut short to accommodate the electrode. The bare leg allowed onlookers to see briefly the tattoo of a pinup on his calf before he sat. Quickly the guards buckled the padded ankle straps—one of which contained a damp sponge and the electrode—then began moving up Gleason’s body, securing the prisoner to the chair. There were straps at his arms and a big strap at his chest. As soon as he was strapped in, the guards adjusted the back of the chair, removing all slack and ensuring that the prisoner could not move.
Gleason looked up and smiled at the observers through the glass window, sitting uncomfortably on their industrial green and white plastic chairs. Then he winked and began to speak: “Well, I hope Percy ain’t going to wet the sponge. Put me on the highway to Jackson, and call my Irish buddies. Póg mo thóin. God bless.”
They were his last words. Percy was a character in the movie The Green Mile who botched an execution by not wetting the crucial sponge on the convict’s head. Póg mo thóin is a Gaelic phrase, meaning “Kiss my ass.”
Then one guard got the thick leather headpiece and pulled it over Gleason’s face. The mask covered his face entirely, leaving only the neck exposed and a hole under the nose to allow him to breathe. Now the world was plunged into darkness for Gleason. He could make out a flash of light if he squinted down the nose hole, but he could not see.
The guard swiftly placed a metal helmet over Gleason’s head and adjusted the nut at the top to tighten it snugly against the skull. Gleason could feel the wetness of the sponge between the helmet and his shaved scalp. The neck strap was tightened and now talking was no longer possible. There was a moment of silence. The moment that Gleason had waited for, wished for, over the past number of years was finally here. Aged forty-two, Robert Gleason was about to die.
The electric chair is a peculiarly American institution. No other country has followed the lead of the United States in adopting electricity as a method of execution. When it goes right, death is quick (not instant). When it goes wrong, it goes terribly wrong. Even when it goes right, smoke rises from the body of the convict and the small execution chamber reeks of charred flesh. Prison officers habitually soak their clothes overnight before washing them to get rid of the smell after an execution.
Virginia began using the electric chair in 1909. Since the reintroduction of the death penalty in 1976, the state has executed 110 convicts. Now those on death row are offered a choice of lethal injection or the chair. Since lethal injection was introduced in 1995, seventy-nine have opted for the needle and only seven for the chair. Robert Gleason was one of those seven. He chose the chair because he believed that lethal injection was far more painful than authorities let on and the chair was the more comfortable way of passing. But there was also an element of machismo in his decision; he did not want to take death lying down.
Gleason, a career criminal, was born in Lowell, Mass, in 1970. He was a lifelong hoodlum, heavily involved in the drug business in and around Boston. He had a string of convictions—but there was another side to him as well. He was a loving and good father to his various children by different mothers. And he could be a charming and funny man.
A talented artist, he also worked in the tattoo business, taking great pride in the adornments he put on fellow bikers and drunk coeds. He organized a charity motorcycle run to raise funds for a child dying of cancer. But in addition to his legitimate activities, he was a big player with the local gangs. He claimed that he killed up to a dozen people and took pride in the fact that they were all criminals.
“I ain’t saying I’m a better person for killing criminals, but I’ve never killed innocent people,” he boasted. “I killed people that’s in the same lifestyle as me, and they know, hey, these things can happen.”
Whether or not he killed the many men he claimed to have (there is no evidence to back up his claims), he certainly killed in 2007. That spring, Gleason was involved in a methamphetamine ring being eyed by Federal investigators, and the son of one of his associates began giving information to Boston police. Gleason struck out at the informer’s father, Michael Kent Jamerson.
Gleason and Jamerson Sr. were driving through a wooded area in Amherst County, Virginia, on May 8, 2007, when suddenly Gleason pulled a gun from Jamerson’s waistband and ordered him to stop the vehicle. When the other man got out, Gleason told him to get right with God, then opened fire. A turkey hunter found Jamerson’s body the next day, and the gun was found about three miles from the scene several days later. Gleason was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life without parole.
There was always a paranoid streak in the Boston gangster, and in prison his mental condition deteriorated. In May 2009 he shared a cell with sixty-three-year-old Harvey Gray Watson, another inmate doing life for murder, at Wallens Ridge State Prison. Watson was even more unstable than Gleason and annoyed the younger man by constantly singing nonsensical verse in the tiny cell. Gleason hog-tied him, then stuffed a sock in his mouth and pressed a urine-soaked cloth to his face, suffocating him.
Gleason, telling the authorities he would keep killing unless he was stopped, demanded the death penalty. To press his claim, he did kill again. In July 2010 he was put in solitary confinement at the maximum security Red Onion State Prison. For one hour a day he was allowed to exercise in a recreational pen. In the adjoining caged pen was another lifer, Aaron Cooper, twenty-six. The two men got talking and Gleason told Cooper that he had made a religious necklace. He passed the white necklace through the mesh and Cooper put it around his neck. Suddenly Gleason jerked both ends, pulling the other man against the cage. He kept the pressure up until Cooper’s face went purple and he stopped struggling. Then Gleason eased the pressure, allowing the victim to revive a bit. When Cooper began to regain consciousness, Gleason applied the pressure once more, this time keeping it up until Cooper was dead.
At the trial, Gleason’s legal team argued that he was mentally unstable, but Gleason was having none of it. He insisted on the death penalty and refused any of the appeals or other delaying tactics that could prolong the stay on death row by more than a decade. He even fired his legal team, telling the court he intended to keep killing unless he was given the death penalty. He was eager to face Old Sparky. He had promised a loved one that he would not kill again and this was the only way he saw of keeping his promise.
“Why prolong it? The end result is going to be the same,” he said. “The death part don’t bother me. This has been a long time coming. It’s called karma.”
Robert Gleason woke early on his final morning and enjoyed his last meal. It was not the standard prison fare of steak and eggs washed down with milk and juice, but he asked that reporters not be told what he had requested. Following his meal, he was joined by his biker buddy Tim Spradling, who doubled as his spiritual adviser for his final hours.
Spradling, who preached at the Richmond Outreach Center, said, “We talked about how my life went one way and his went in the opposite direction. He cried for his victims and asked God for forgiveness.” After two hours of contemplation and reflection, wardens summoned Gleason to his final reckoning.
He was led into the execution chamber at nine o’clock in the morning. It took three minutes for the guards to expertly tie him down and place the electrodes in contact with his calf and skull. Thick wires led from the chair to the control panel. One guard stood by the red phone on the wall—a direct line to the governor. But nobody—least of all the prisoner—expected the tinkle of the receiver and a reprieve. Another guard stood with a key, ready to insert it in the wall and activate the mechanism.
At 9:03 a.m., the chamber was silent. The prisoner had uttered his last words and was muzzled by the sci-fi contraption around his head. The guards were in position. The man with the key inserted it and twisted. In an adjoining room, the executioner stood poised. He could see through the small window into the chamber with the chair. He put his finger on the small round button and pressed. The execution had begun.
Noiselessly, the first cycle of electricity began to course through the convict’s body, entering through the top of his head and exiting through his right calf. His body spasmed against the leather restraints, as 1,800 volts at 7.5 amps surged through him. Smoke began to waft from the top of his head and the two guards in the chamber twitched as the stench of burning flesh filled their noses. Both had smeared Vaseline in their nostrils beforehand but that could not block out the smell completely.
After thirty seconds the power was reduced to 250 volts at 1.5 amps and this was maintained for the next minute. Then the power automatically cut off and the prisoner visibly relaxed, slumping in the chair. He showed no signs of movement. He was already unconscious and possibly his heart had stopped.
After a five-second pause, the machine began its work again. The cycle of 1,800 volts for thirty seconds, followed by 250 volts for a minute was repeated. At the end of the second cycle none of the onlookers could have any doubt. Sometimes prisoners needed up to five cycles before expiring. Some remained conscious after the first—or even the second—cycle, screaming in agony as their flesh burned. But that day, it had gone smoothly.
The observers continued to watch through the blue-curtained window for another two minutes. Then the door of the execution chamber opened and a white-coated doctor stepped in, wrinkling his nose in distaste. He stepped up to the slumped prisoner and held a stethoscope to his chest for a few moments before looking up and pronouncing: “Time of death, nine minutes past eight.”
The whole process, from turning on the juice to the official announcement, had taken five minutes. The curtain was pulled and the spectacle was over.
Robert Gleason was the first prisoner to be executed in the United States in 2013 and the first in three years to choose the electric chair. Virginia is one of ten states that gives death row inmates that choice.
Old Sparky had claimed another life.