Patricia Cornwell - Cruel and Unusual

More doors were unlocked, and we found ourselves outside in the yard, a square of browning grass surrounded by ugly cell blocks. There were no trees. Guard towers rose from each corner of the wall, the men inside wearing heavy coats and holding rifles. We moved quickly and in silence as sleet stung our cheeks. Down several steps, we turned into another opening leading to an iron door more massive than any of the others I had seen.

“The east basement,” Roberts said, inserting a key in the lock. “This is the place where no one wants to be.”

We stepped inside death row.

Against the east wall were five cells, each furnished with an iron bed and a white porcelain sink and toilet. In the center of the room were a large desk and several chairs where guards sat around the clock when death row was occupied.

“Waddell was in cell two.” Roberts pointed. “According to the laws of the Commonwealth, an inmate must be transferred here fifteen days prior to his execution.”

“Who had access to him while he was here?” Marino asked.

“Same people who always have access to death row. legal representatives, the clergy, and members of the death team.”

“The death team?” I asked.

“It's made up of Corrections officers and supervisors, the identities of which are confidential. The team becomes involved when an inmate is shipped here from Mecklenburg. They guard him, set up everything from beginning to end.”

“Don't sound like a very pleasant assignment,” Marino commented.

“It's not an assignment, it's a choice,” Roberts replied with the machismo and inscrutability of coaches interviewed after the big game.

“It don't bother you?” Marino asked. “I mean, come on, I saw Waddell, go to the chair. It's got to bother you.”

“Doesn't bother me in the least. I go home afterward, drink a few beers, go to bed.”

He reached in the breast pocket of his uniform shirt and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, “Now, according to Donahue, you want to know everything that, happened. So I'm going to walk you,through it.”

He sat on top of the desk, smoking. “On the day of it, December thirteenth, Waddell was allowed a two-hour contact visit with members of his immediate family, which in this case was his mother. We put him in waist chains, leg irons; and cuffs and led him over to the visitors' side around one P.M.

“At five P.M., he ate his last meal. His request was sirloin steak, salad, a baked potato, and pecan pie, which we had prepared for him at Bonanza Steak House. He didn't pick the restaurant. The inmates don't get to do that. And, as is the routine, there were two identical meals ordered. The inmate eats one, a member of the death team eats the other. And this is all to make sure some overly enthusiastic chef doesn't decide to speed up the inmate's journey to the Great Beyond by spicing the food with something extra like arsenic.

“Did Waddell eat his meal?” I asked, thinking about his empty stomach “He wasn't real hungry - asked us to save it for him to eat the next day.”

“He must have thought Governor Norring was going to pardon him,” Marino said.

“I don't know what he thought. I'm just reporting to you what Waddell said when he was served his meal. Afterward, at seven-thirty, personal property officers came to his cell to take an inventory of his property and ask him what he wanted done with it. We're talking about one wristwatch, one ring, various articles of clothing and mail, books, poetry. At eight P.M., he was taken from his cell. His head, face, and right ankle were shaved. He was weighed, showered, and dressed in the clothing he would wear to the chair. Then he was returned to his cell.

“At ten-forty-five, his death warrant was read to him, witnessed by the death team.”

Roberts got up from the desk “Then he was led, without restraints, to the adjoining room.”

“What was his demeanor at this point?” Marino asked as Roberts unlocked another door and opened it.

“Let's just say that his racial affiliation did not permit him to be white as a sheet. Otherwise, he would've been.”

The room was smaller than I had imagined. About six from the back wall and centered on the shiny brown cement floor was the chair, a stark, rigid throne of dark polished oak Thick leather straps were looped around high slatted back, the two front legs, and the arm rests.

“Waddell was seated and the first strap fastened-was the chest strap,” Roberts continued in the same indifferent tone. “Then the two arm straps, the belly strap, and the straps for the legs.”

He roughly plucked at each strap as he talked. “It took one minute to strap him in. His face was covered with the leather mask - and I'll show you that in a minute. The helmet was placed on his head, the leg piece attached to his right leg.”

I got out my camera, a ruler, and photocopies of Waddell's body diagrams.

“At exactly two minutes past eleven, he received the first current - that's twenty-flue hundred volts and six and a half amps. Two amps will kill you, by the way.”

The injuries marked on Waddell's body diagrams correlated nicely with the construction of the chair and its restraints.

“The helmet attaches to this.” Roberts pointed out a pipe running from the ceiling and ending with a copper wing nut directly over the chair.

I began taking photographs of the chair from every angle. - “And the leg piece attaches to this wing nut here.”

The flashbulb going off gave me a strange sensation. I was getting jumpy.

“All this man was, was one big circuit breaker.”

“When did he start to bleed?” I asked.

“The minute he was hit the first time, ma'am. And he didn't stop until it was completely over, then a curtain was drawn, blocking him from the view of the witnesses. Three members of the death team undid his shirt and the doc listened with his stethoscope and felt the carotid and pronounced him. Waddell was placed on a gurney and taken into the cooling room, which is where we're headed next.”

“Your theory about the chair allegedly malfunctioning?” I said.

“Pure crap. Waddell was six-foot-four, weighed two hundred and fifty-nine pounds. He was cooking long before he sat in the chair, his blood pressure probably out of sight. After he was pronounced, because of the bleeding, the deputy director came over to take a look at him. His eyeballs hadn't popped out. His eardrums hadn't popped out. Waddell had a damn nosebleed, same thing people get when they strain too hard on the toilet.”

I silently agreed with him. Waddell's nosebleed was due to the Valsalva maneuver, or an abrupt increase in intrathoracic pressure. Nicholas Grueman would not be pleased with the report I planned to send him.

“What tests had you run to make sure the chair was operating properly?” Marino asked.

“Same ones we always do. First, Virginia Power looks at the equipment and checks it out.”

He pointed to a large circuit box enclosed in gray steel doors in the wall behind the chair. “Inside this is twenty two-hundred-watt light bulbs attached to plyboard for running tests. We test this during the week before the execution, three times the day of it, and then once more in front of the witnesses after they've assembled.”

“Yeah, I remember that,” Marino said, staring at the glass-enclosed witness booth no more than fifteen feet away. Inside were twelve black plastic chairs arranged in three neat rows.

“Everything worked like a charm,” Roberts said.

“Has it always?” I asked.

“To my knowledge, yes, ma'am.”

“And the switch, where is that?”

He directed my attention to a box on the wall to the right of the witness booth. “A key cuts the power on. But the button's in the control room. The warden or a designee turns the key and pushes the button. You want to see that?”