A LITTLE BIT DARKER
“Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for God made man in his own image.”
Genesis 9:6
“All the men and women whom I have faced at that final moment convince me that in what I have done I have not prevented a single murder. Capital punishment, in my view, achieved nothing except revenge.”
Albert Pierrepoint, former British hangman
When I started witnessing executions, I was adamantly pro-death penalty, but I didn’t really ask myself what the death penalty was for. It existed in Texas, and I saw it as justice for the victims of the most heinous crimes. That was the long and the short of it. But as time went on, and I got to know the inmates and see how the victims’ families reacted to witnessing the person who killed their loved ones die, it became obvious to me that there were no winners. I’d be standing in the witness room thinking, “There’s an inmate over there, dying on a gurney; there’s the inmate’s family over there, watching him die; there’s the victim’s family over there, having to listen to the inmate’s mother screaming. Everybody is being screwed over, this is all bullshit…”
In most cases, the inmate’s family had nothing to do with the crime that had been committed. They raised their kids as best they could and hoped they’d do right, but, ultimately, they didn’t have any control over how they turned out, and they paid a very big price for what their son or father or brother had done. I believe some of the victims’ families gained something from executions, at least they said they did. After the execution of Orien Cecil Joiner in 2000, two of his victim’s relatives high-fived each other as they left the death chamber. The son of one of Betty Lou Beets’ victims raised his fist to the sky in triumph outside the Walls Unit. And after Michael Perry was executed in 2010, his victim’s daughter said, “I needed to look into his eyes and see if he was the monster I had made him out to be. Now I know that he is.” But then there was someone like Linda Purnhagen, whose two children were murdered by Dennis Dowthitt, and who admitted that watching his execution in 2001 “would have been easier if he had been horrible.”
While some family members hoped an execution might bring some sort of closure, others openly admitted that watching an execution brought them no peace. There were even family members who petitioned the Governor to show clemency. The family of Clay Peterson, who was stabbed to death by Johnny Martinez in Corpus Christi in 1993, attempted to get Martinez’s sentence commuted to life imprisonment. Jamie Hollis, the nephew of Lonnie Pursley’s victim, Robert Cook, wrote Pursley a poem, expressing his forgiveness: “A soul that is lost, pays no greater cost, than to leave this world, without being forgiven…”
As for Thomas Bartlett Whitaker, his father’s ceaseless campaigning for clemency paid off—in February 2018, an hour before he was scheduled to die, Whitaker became the first inmate to be spared by a Texas governor (in this case Greg Abbott) in more than ten years. “I deserve punishment for my crimes,” said Whitaker, “but my dad did nothing wrong.”
Family members would often say, more in hope than expectation, that an execution had brought a chapter to an end. But how healthy was it that the chapter had lasted so long? In some cases, inmates were on death row for decades, which is why you heard a lot of family members say, “Thank God it’s finally over with. We can now try to move on and put it behind us.” With the emphasis on “try.” Robert Lee Powell gunned down a police officer in Austin in 1978, and wasn’t executed until 2010. In the time Powell was on death row, 459 inmates were executed. Talk about killing time, and imagine the agony of waiting for the victim’s family. Raymond Riles has been on death row since 1976, Harvey Earvin since 1977, and some people question whether an execution loses some of its purpose if it takes place so long after the crime. During his stay on death row, Powell turned from a drug-fueled killer into a model prisoner, a peacemaker who taught illiterate inmates how to read. His victim’s family didn’t witness the same man die who killed their loved one.
Some family members were angry that the inmate got to say goodbye to his relatives and tie up loose ends, while their victim or victims weren’t afforded that luxury. On the flipside, the inmate and his family had a different type of agony: knowing the exact minute when they should expect death. That’s a punishment in itself, and that’s presumably why some inmates tried to take their own lives rather than be executed—having that death sentence hanging over them is more than some of them can bear.
Roy Pippin set fire to his cell just before he was due to be taken to the death house in 2007, using a piece of wire stuck in a wall socket, only for the fire to be extinguished by officers. Michael Johnson was more successful. Johnson killed himself 16 hours before his scheduled execution in 2006, by slashing a jugular vein in his arm with a razor blade. He wrote “I didn’t do it” on the wall in blood, although the evidence said otherwise. I wondered if that was because he was terrified of being strapped to the gurney, or it was his way of taking back control, by dying on his own terms, and not the state’s.
Some family members left the death chamber angry that the inmate hadn’t acknowledged them or apologized. Graczyk would ask them, “Did his lack of apology bother you?” and the victim’s mom or dad might reply, “Yeah, he’s a coward, he should have taken ownership of his crime.” Others said it wouldn’t have mattered either way. But these were abstract, hypothetical questions, because nobody really knew what they would have felt had the opposite happened. Others were angry that the inmate had had the audacity to apologize, having not done so previously, while others didn’t know how to compute the fact that the inmate had apologized at all. It put them in a dilemma: Did they now have to forgive them? Or was it an eye for an eye? Texas is a very conservative state and goes hand in hand with Christianity, but the Bible can be interpreted in so many different ways. Graczyk would also ask, “Do you accept the apology he made on the gurney?” Not many did.
For some, the process was rather anti-climactic: they walked into a room and watched the man who killed their loved one go to sleep. There was no blood or gore or screaming, like there would have been when the inmate killed their loved one. I recall one family member saying they would have preferred to see the inmate stoned to death. But mostly it was along the lines of, “it was over too quickly,” or “he should have felt more pain.”
I agree with Larry, executions don’t bring closure, as much as reporters and the wider public demand they do. Executions are generally retribution, pure and simple, although I don’t fault the victims’ families for wanting retribution, because I’d want it too. I guess the idea is that the victims’ families will no longer be tortured by the thought that this evil person is still alive while their loved one is dead. Unfortunately, the grieving never ends.
I came to feel that executions were just sad situations all round. It was sad that a murder had happened and an innocent person lost their life, it was sad that this was what people did to each other, it was sad that we were all standing there watching a man die. What part of that makes anybody feel good? Everybody loses. And I had to witness that sadness over and over again. Being the conduit to the outside world just became so intense and dark. The sadness was winning. As Graczyk also used to ask, “Are you glad you came?” Who could possibly be glad about anything in such a sad situation?
It began to trouble me that other people couldn’t see both sides of the argument. It wasn’t my job to present both sides of the argument, but the death penalty was the only hot button topic that I’d had any direct experience of. Whenever I discovered that somebody had a clear position on the death penalty, I’d find myself arguing against it. Somebody would say they were vehemently pro-death penalty, that the state had every right to put a person to death if they’d committed a terrible crime, and I’d find myself saying, “Okay, I get where you’re coming from, but here’s the other side of that argument. What about if that person was only 17 when he committed the crime? What if he was no longer a danger to society?”
I was spending more and more time questioning the executions of certain inmates. Leonard Rojas was executed for murdering his girlfriend and brother, whom he suspected of sleeping with each other. I wouldn’t have given Rojas the death penalty for that, because it seemed like a crime of passion rather than anything pre-meditated. Then there were the Law of Parties cases, in which the person who pulled the trigger might receive a life sentence, usually after turning in his accomplices and striking a deal, while the person who was known not to have pulled the trigger was sentenced to die. I had a real issue with that, it made no sense to me—there was something maddeningly arbitrary about it.
There would always be someone complaining about last meals—“I think it’s a disgrace that we give them any courtesies after what they did”—and I’d say, “Have you ever had a relative on death row? No? Well, if you did, would you want them to have a comforting meal before they were executed?” If someone came out as vehemently anti-death penalty, I’d find myself saying, “But what if your wife was murdered? Do you have a child? What if your daughter was raped and stabbed to death?” I’d back my arguments up with real facts from cases I was familiar with. And by this time, I was familiar with a lot of cases. What if you were the parents of Jennifer Ertman or Elizabeth Peña, who were gang-raped for more than an hour before being stomped to death by Peter Cantu? Would it bother you to see Cantu die? What if you were the parents of Christina Benjamin, who was raped, stabbed, disemboweled and decapitated by Jason Massey in 1993? (On the gurney, Massey finally revealed that he’d thrown Benjamin’s head off a bridge, into the Trinity River.) I’d defy people to read the details of some of these cases and not feel sick.
I was arguing all the time, because it bothered me that people held such strong opinions about things they didn’t have any experience of. They’d often never known anyone in prison, much less on death row. It wasn’t just the death penalty; people being obnoxious about any hot-button topic they had no real knowledge of annoyed me. Someone would declare themselves as staunchly anti-abortion, and I’d think, “Were you faced with a pregnancy when you were 15, having been raped by a psychopathic father?” It got to the point where I was being pretty snarky with one particular reporter, because he was just so right-wing about everything and obnoxiously pro-death penalty. He pissed me off more than most because he was a journalist, so should have seen both sides. I kept making him watch executions from the inmate’s side, but even all those mothers weeping and wailing didn’t teach him any empathy.
After Larry had left the building for good, I witnessed two executions from the IV room, because I felt I had to. I spent a lot of time talking about executions, but I’d never actually seen the process from start to finish. The warden brought me into the death house at 5.45 p.m., through a narrow pipe chase that runs behind the holding cells, and through this door that leads into the IV room. It was tiny, with a small table, on which were laid the drugs.
When you see pictures of the death chamber, you can see there’s a tiny hole in the wall, maybe six inches by six inches, like a little slot, and that’s where the IV lines pass through, directly from the needles attached to the inmate. Next to the slot is a one-way glass, and behind that glass is a three- or four-man team, volunteers from the local community with medical training. They can’t be actual doctors, because the Hippocratic Oath states that you should “do no harm.”
From that vantage point, I actually got to see the inmate enter the death chamber, step onto the gurney and get strapped down. It bothered me greatly to witness the inmate’s docility. Members of the IV team talked to him while they were swabbing him with alcohol and establishing the lines. It looked like idle chit-chat, and I wondered what they could possibly be saying: “Hey, how are you?” “Not great, I’m about to die on a gurney…” But I guess it was similar to giving blood, when the nurse senses you’re a bit nervous and says, “This might pinch.” Then they got the saline solution flowing, the witnesses were brought in and the execution got under way.
There isn’t a machine that pushes the syringe, it’s done by hand. It’s not like a firing squad, where nobody knows who shot the fatal bullet. I saw who administered the drugs, but very few people ever do—as long as I worked there and as many secrets as I knew, even I didn’t know who acted as executioner until the day I witnessed from that room. He pushed the syringe to release the first drug, pushed the syringe to release the second and pushed the syringe to release the third. I witnessed from the IV room only twice, because it troubled me so much, seeing the inmate walk unrestrained to the gurney, hopping up there and offering his arms with no hesitation.
I went in for my annual physical and the nurse, who I had known for years, said to me, “How’s work?” I replied that it was fine, and she said, “You just seem a little bit darker, not your usual bubbly self.” I was used to people seeing me as a happy, smiley person, so that bothered the hell out of me. I’d prided myself on the fact that nobody could notice I was having a hard time and it troubled me that I wasn’t as good at hiding it as I thought.
I was always a contradiction, a puzzle to a lot of people. I held back pieces of myself, because I was afraid that if anybody saw all of me, they would feel that I shouldn’t be loved at all. I was honest and closed, in that I didn’t tell everything I knew. I was breezy and deeply introspective. I didn’t want anybody to feel sorry for me, which is why I didn’t even tell my husband when I cried all the way home after an execution, because I didn’t want him to say, “You should perhaps go and talk to someone.”
Being seen as strong was so important to me. My mother is a wonderfully strong woman, my grandmothers have been wonderfully strong women, and I didn’t want anybody to think I was anything less than they were. But now I’d be in a TDCJ meeting, putting up with all their shit, and find myself tearing up. I’ve made that particular face an awful lot. If it were a piece of art hanging in a gallery, it would be called “Determined Through Tears.” I would be so mad, but more frustrated, because I guarantee my mom or grandma never cried at work about anything.
One of Larry and my favorite things to do was stand outside the Walls Unit and watch inmates be released. The inmates who had done their time and owed nothing else to the state walked out the front door, and the inmates who were on parole walked out the side entrance, because they had to tie things up with the parole office. They’d all come out in a big swarm, carrying these little red onion sacks, in which would be their belongings.
It was the coolest thing to watch a former inmate break into a huge smile and see their kids running up the street, before jumping into their arms. Or you’d see a former inmate tenderly embracing and kissing his wife or girlfriend. That gave me chills. But more and more I just felt sad for those former inmates who had nobody to greet them and had to watch all this joy around them. You’d see them trudge off toward the Greyhound station with their bus voucher in one hand and onion sack over their shoulder. Who knew where they were going, whether they had anybody to go to or whether they’d soon be back.
In October 2007, a fisherman in Galveston Bay found the body of a little girl stuffed into a plastic container. Her injuries meant she was unrecognizable, and the media dubbed her “Baby Grace.” The following month, police arrested Kimberly Ann Trenor and her husband Royce Clyde Zeigler, out of Spring, Texas. The girl’s name was Riley Ann Sawyers, and Trenor was her mother and Zeigler her stepfather. When Trenor was questioned by police, she confessed that she and Zeigler had beaten the little girl with leather straps and held her head underwater in a bath tub, before Zeigler had picked her up by her hair and thrown her across the room, causing her head to smash against the floor. The couple hid her remains in a shed for two months before throwing her off a bridge.
My daughter was about the same age as Riley Ann, and they both had this really fine, blonde hair. So I couldn’t get this image out of my head, of Riley Ann being swung around by her hair. I’d be reading about it in my office and weeping. I read the same article over and over again. It was just so horrible, but I couldn’t not read it. That case really tore me up. This woman, who was originally from Ohio, had fled with the baby to another state, so that the baby’s biological father was fraught with worry, and then she’d let this asshole she was married to beat her child to death. That was one of the few times I rooted for somebody to be executed.
It always bugged me that women weren’t treated the same as men when it came to the death penalty. Women committed some of the most detestable crimes in Texas, often crimes against their own children, and didn’t get executed. There was a case out of Beaumont, where a former correctional officer named Kenisha Berry killed one of her children and attempted to kill another. She put duct tape over her four-day-old son’s mouth, threw him in a trash bag and tossed him in a dumpster, while he was still alive. A few years later, another newborn baby was found abandoned in a ditch, covered in fire-ant bites, but she survived. Berry was sentenced to death, but that decision was later overturned, because it was decided the prosecution had not adequately proved that she was a continuing threat to society, only to her own children. It seemed like women wanted equality, except when it came to the death penalty.
My best friend worked at the District Attorney’s office in Galveston, and I asked her if they were going to push for the death penalty for Trenor. She said no, and I was so upset. I just couldn’t understand why not. Prosecutors decided it was unlikely the jury would have sentenced her to death. I thought that was bullshit. All these irrational thoughts started swirling in my head. I wondered if I could somehow get to this woman. I worked for the prison system, there had to be a way. It’s not as if I was hatching a plan with pen and paper, they were just thoughts, but wild all the same. I felt so strongly that justice wouldn’t be done.
I was right. In 2009, Trenor was sentenced to life in prison, with the possibility of parole after 38 years. The jurors wept. Zeigler got life without parole. The state didn’t seek the death penalty for him, either. While she was awaiting trial, Trenor gave birth again.
It took a long time for me to start unraveling, but now it had begun. In 2008, when my daughter was three, I got divorced. My husband is a good man, and a great dad, but we just weren’t compatible. It had nothing to do with anxieties over my job, it’s just that the opposites attract thing hadn’t lasted too long. I’m not regretful at all, we had a beautiful daughter together that I wouldn’t have had otherwise, and I thank God for her every day.