Should the death chamber be silent?
VARNER, ARK. >> The nation’s first double execution in 16 years raised a new issue involving transparency and the death penalty: Should witnesses be allowed to hear what goes on in the death chamber?
A lawyer who watched Monday’s executions in Arkansas said he saw an inmate open his mouth several times when it should have been still, prompting another lawyer to claim in a court filing that Jack Jones was gulping for air after being given a sedative, the first component of a lethal injection. Other witnesses did not see it the same way. An open microphone could have settled the question.
When the two convicted murderers were put to death, the 20 or so witnesses heard only what Department of Correction Director Wendy Kelley wanted them to hear.
A spokesman for the Arkansas prison system, Solomon Graves, said he inherited a policy that limits what can be heard from the death chamber. The standard procedure has been to turn off a microphone inside the 18-by-12-foot chamber after an inmate’s last statement and turn it on again for the official pronouncement of death. Several other states have similar policies.
“There is no legitimate reason to turn off the sound,” said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes capital punishment. “If you’re going to have public oversight and the witnesses are going to be able to do their jobs to determine whether the execution was carried out in a competent manner, if there’s something unanticipated that happens, the way you tell is by what people say.”
Because the microphone was off during Monday’s first execution, witnesses disagreed on whether Jack Jones was struggling for air after being given 500 milligrams of midazolam. A lawyer who believed he saw Jones moving his mouth testified in a late-night court hearing Monday on whether a stay should be given to Marcel Williams, the second inmate killed Monday night, to avoid inflicting a “tortuous” death. A judge rejected his plea.
Williams, who weighed 400 pounds, probably needed a second 500 milligram dose of midazolam. An attendant could be seen mouthing the words “I’m not sure” after checking Williams’ consciousness five minutes into the night’s second execution. Arkansas’ protocol requires that the inmate receive a second dose of midazolam if the first does not render him sufficiently unconscious.
Texas, which has executed the most prisoners since the U.S. Supreme Court reauthorized the death penalty in 1976, does not shut off the audio in the death chamber.
At Huntsville, Texas, in the 1980s, there was no glass wall separating the witnesses from the condemned, though at times it was difficult to hear if the prisoner mumbled or spoke softly. Plexiglass was put up after an intravenous line popped out and began to spurt toward witnesses during a December 1988 execution, but it’s been a given that the witnesses should see and hear what is happening.
Witnesses in the other states are often close enough to the chamber that they can hear through the glass wall without any help from a microphone.