David Dow - The Autobiography of an Execution

AN ALABAMA SONG was playing on the radio. It reminded me of when I had picked up Lincoln from Rachel’s house after a playdate six months before. Alabama was singing about how angels come down from heaven to visit us when we’re sad . Lincoln asked me to play it again. I told him I couldn’t because it had been on the radio. He downloaded it from iTunes as soon as we got home and sat in front of his computer listening to it, over and over. When Katya called him to dinner he said, This song brings tears to my eyes.

I’d never seen him so morose. Katya gently pressed him to tell us why he was sad. He said, It’s because I don’t have any courage.

Yes you do, amigo. You have plenty of courage.

It’s not true.

His lower lip trembled like he was about to start crying. But he didn’t. Katya said, Lincoln, why do you think you don’t have any courage?

He said, Rachel was sad. I don’t know why. I could tell she was sad, and I didn’t have the courage to say anything to her.

Katya said, Sometimes it’s hard to talk to someone who’s sad, isn’t it?

Yeah.

Well, Lincoln, no matter what you say, if you are trying to make that person feel better, she will appreciate it. Do you understand what I mean?

Yeah. Thanks, Mama.

THE HOLDING CELL has a distinctly medieval feel. It is damp and dark and gray. There is no TV or radio, but there is a rotary-dial telephone on the concrete floor that might have been new in the 1970s. To get to the place where condemned prisoners spend the final three hours of their lives, you pass through two electronically controlled doors. Then you exit the prison through a heavy steel door that opens with a key that is eight inches long. The warden’s assistant, the key dangling from her neck as if she were a character in a Dickens novel, escorted me across a small courtyard, really just a rectangle of grass surrounded by concrete walls, and knocked on another door like the one through which we just passed. A guard inside peered through a slot covered with Plexiglas and visually identified my escort and me. Then he opened the door with another giant key. The warden’s assistant left, and I was standing in an L-shaped, windowless area.

The base of the L is the actual holding cell; the rest is a short hall where the three guards stood and watched over Green. To my right, as I faced Green, was another steel door that looks like it belongs on a submarine. It is the entrance to the room where inmates die. The holding cell itself has two walls of cinder block, and two walls of steel bars covered with a mesh that looks like chicken wire. A metal cot is bolted to one wall, and there is a stainless-steel toilet. It is five steps long and two and a half steps wide.

Green was sitting on the cot, inhaling through his nose and exhaling loudly through his mouth. Beads of sweat covered his forehead and his upper lip. For a brief moment I thought he had not heard me come in. The three guards lingered off to my left standing next to a small table, talking in low voices that were not quite a whisper. On the table was a plate piled with french fries and a second plate with a slice of pie covered with whipped cream from a can. There was a squeeze bottle of Hunt’s ketchup and a plastic cup with what looked like lemonade. Green looked at me and said, Hey. Just then the phone rang. A guard picked it up, spoke briefly, and handed it to Green. Green said, Uh-huh, uh-huh, okay, and handed the receiver back to the guard. He said to me, That was Mr. Roberts. I got turned down.

When my clients ask me to, I watch them die. When they don’t, I sit in my office until the courts and the governor’s office have all turned down our final requests for relief, then I close my door and call my client, just like Mark Roberts had just done. I make notes to remind myself not to say certain things, like Talk to you later, or Take care, or See you around, or any of the other meaningless expressions that pepper our everyday discourse and that become suddenly full of meaning when they aren’t true and can’t possibly be. I found myself standing next to Green with no Post-its to remind me what not to say and no script of what I wanted to cover. I said, I’m sorry. Green leaned forward and held his head in his hands. I wanted to be outside. I said, I just wanted to come see you to say thanks for trying to help me.

He said, All right.

I had no idea why I was there. Did I expect Green to say he had been making it up? Or maybe I hoped he’d reveal some proof that he wasn’t. What was I thinking? I got the attention of one of the guards and nodded toward the door. I said to Green, You have any messages or anything you want me to pass on to anyone?

He said, My old man used to beat me with a switch. Made it from a peach tree we had in the yard. He said he liked to use peach wood ’cause it left big ol’ welts. Mr. Roberts asked him how come he didn’t never beat me with his fist. He said ’cause he didn’t want to hurt his hands.

The guard put the giant key in the lock. Green said, Everything I done tol’ you is the truth. I swear to God.

There’s an old joke among death-penalty lawyers. Once you’ve killed somebody, swearing to tell the truth, so help you God, doesn’t pack quite the same punch it did before. I said, I appreciate it.

He said, Henry Quaker didn’t kill nobody. I know that for a fact.

I said, Thanks again, Green. I’ll see you down the road. He didn’t look up.

The guard opened the door, and I walked out into the twilight chill.

ASMALL GROUP of death-penalty opponents stood outside the prison, twenty or twenty-five people in all, a few black, the rest white. Each person held a small candle. Some had posters with the usual clichés: Why Do We Kill People for Killing People to Show That Killing Is Wrong? Et cetera. I nodded at several I knew. Brigitte walked over and asked whether I was representing Green. I said no. She asked whether I thought he would get a stay, and I told her they were moving him from the holding cell to the execution chamber at that very moment. She works in the French consulate’s office and is genuinely perplexed by the death penalty. She squeezed my forearm and said, This is terrible. Will you come stand with us?

Protesting against the death penalty in Texas takes a certain passion I do not have, or maybe what I lack is courage. The fraternity boys at the university across the street heckle the demonstrators and occasionally throw bananas and paper cups filled with warm beer. Sheriff’s deputies ticket their cars and threaten to arrest them if they chant too loudly or get too close to the yellow tape. My friend Dave Atwood spent the night in the Walker County jail after someone jostled him and his right foot momentarily crossed the police barricade. I stood several feet behind them, not part of them, feeling alienated, I suppose, and watched the minute hand of the clock on the prison tower slide toward six. At nineteen minutes past, the prison spokesperson came out. She reported that Green shook his head no when asked if he had a final statement, that he glanced briefly at his wife, and then stared at the ceiling as the injection began. He coughed twice, and was pronounced dead at 6:11 p.m. Another witness who covers executions for the local paper stood at the podium next. He said that the reporters could see bruises on Green’s arm and could hear Green saying, This is torture, before he lost consciousness. As another reporter stepped up to the lectern, I got in my car and drove off.