Former Warden Reconsiders Executions

As a lover of history and a longtime expert when it comes to the Texas prison system, Willett opens the broadcast with a description of the death house, the site of all state executions since 1924. "We've carried out a lot of executions here lately, and with all the debate about the death penalty, I thought this might be a good time to let you hear exactly how we do these things," he says. "Sometimes I wonder whether people really understand what goes on down here and the effect it has on us."

Of the comments from nearly a dozen prison guards, chaplains and reporters who witnessed large numbers of executions, some of the most telling come from Jim Brazzil, the chaplain who worked under Willett and had by the time of the broadcast been with 114 inmates while they were put to death. "I usually put my hand right below their knee, you know, and I usually give 'em a squeeze, let 'em know I'm right there," Brazzil says. "You can feel the trembling, the fear that's there, the anxiety that's there. You can feel the heart surging, you know. You can see it pounding through their shirt." Later in the piece, he talks about his last interactions with inmates before they passed out. "One of 'em would say, 'I just want to tell you thank you.' One of 'em would say, 'Don't forget to mail my letters.' Another one would say, 'Just tell me again–is it gonna hurt?' One of them would say, 'What do I do when I see God?' You've got 45 seconds and you're trying to tell the guy what to say to God?"

One of the voices in the NPR story belongs to Fred Allen, a former officer on the tie-down team who participated in about 120 executions. He resigned after a mental breakdown. "I was just working in the shop and all of a sudden something just triggered in me and I started shaking," he says. His wife asked him what was wrong, and he started to weep uncontrollably. "All of these executions all of a sudden all sprung forward. Just like taking slides in a film projector and having a button and just pushing a button and just watching, over and over: him, him, him...You see I can barely even talk because I'm thinking more and more of it. You know, there was just so many of 'em."

The broadcast closes with Willett as he looks forward to retiring. "To tell you the truth, this is something I won't miss a bit," he says. "There are times when I'm standing there, watching those fluids start to flow, and wonder whether what we're doing here is right. It's something I'll be thinking about for the rest of my life."

As Willett leads me through the museum and recounts his time in the death chamber, he mentions that usually when an inmate was lying on the gurney he would ask the man if the straps were too tight. "It's about making the inmate comfortable," he says. I ask if he thinks it's ironic that he would try to make a man comfortable right before signaling the executioner to kill him. He looks at me for a moment and nods. "It's ironic as heck!" he says.

We talk about reports of botched lethal injections across the country. Does he think lethal injection is inhumane? "I don't think Texas has any problem with that," he says. "A medical person once told me we give 'em enough to put a horse to sleep." Willett avoids making political statements or taking a position for or against the death penalty. But he's unabashed in expressing his compassion for all of the people brought together in the execution process–those who perform the execution itself, the inmates and their victims, and the families who sit in the viewing gallery on either side of the wall.

"One night after an execution, the inmate had died and I called the doctor in," he tells me, standing in between Old Sparky and the case with the IV bag and syringes. "I move over and I'm facing these two [viewing] rooms. On one side of the wall was a daughter of the inmate, on the other side was the daughter of the victim, both deep in thought. And I thought, they don't even know the other is there. And what made it eerie was that they were both victims."

Over the next two weeks, publications around the world will report that Texas, the epicenter of capital punishment, has put the brakes on its well-oiled death machine. On the day in late September when the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would consider the legality of lethal injection, several Texas inmates were scheduled for execution. A team of attorneys prepared an appeal for one of them based on the pending decision, but their computer reportedly crashed and while they were scrambling to fix it one of them called the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to say they would be a few minutes late and to please stay open. They were told no, and a few hours later, their client was dead. The other inmates, however, were granted stays, raising questions about a de facto moratorium even in the state of Texas.

If that happens, Willett wouldn't necessarily oppose it. "I do wonder sometimes, the people who are guilty of real violent murders or crimes against children, why do they deserve to live?" he says. "But maybe we don't have the right to ask that–I don't know. For me, it's up to the people of Texas, whatever they want to do. If they said, 'Let's not have executions,' I'd be fine with that."