Man faces execution for third time

LIVINGSTON, Texas — What Cleve Foster remembers most about his recent brushes with death is the steel door, the last one condemned Texas inmates typically walk through before their execution.

But twice over the past year and a half, Foster has come within moments of being escorted through the door, only to be told the U.S. Supreme Court had halted his scheduled punishment.

On Tuesday, Foster, 48, is scheduled for yet another trip to the death house for participating in the abduction and slaying of a 30-year-old Sudanese woman, Nyaneur Pal, a decade ago near Fort Worth.

The Huntsville Unit is where condemned Texas prisoners have been put to death for nearly a century. The last 485 have been by lethal injection.

Foster, a former Army recruiter known to his death row colleagues as “Sarge,” denies his role in the murder. Prosecutors say DNA ties him to the killing. “I did not do it,” he insisted recently.

Appeals again pending in the

were courts. Similar appeals resulted in the previous reprieves the courts subsequently have lifted.

“I don’t want to sound vain, but I have confidence in my attorney and confidence in my God,” he said. “I can win either way.”

Foster, however, shared his thoughts of going through the mechanics of facing execution in Texas — and living to talk about it.

The process shifts into high gear at noon on the scheduled execution day when a four-hour-long visit with friends or relatives ends at the Polunsky Unit outside Livingston.

“That last visit, that’s the only thing that bothers me,” he said. “The 12 o’clock-hour hits. A dozen or so guards come to escort you.”

At the prison gate, armed officers stand by as he’s put in a van and secured to a seat for the trip to Huntsville. “It’s like stepping back in time, dungeons and dragons,” he said of entering through two gates at the back of the Huntsville Unit. “It’s almost like ` Hotel California,”’ he said, referring to the song by The Eagles. “You can check out anytime, but you can’t leave.”

Both times he’s been there, most recently last September, he’s been treated “like a human being,” Foster said.

At 4 p.m., during his first trip to the death house in January 2011, he was served a final meal. He’d asked for several items, including chicken.

“It tasted so good,” he said. “It actually had seasoning on it.”

Two hours later, at the start of a six-hour window when his execution could be carried out, he received the Supreme Court reprieve.

Since then, inmates no longer get to make a final meal request. Procedures were changed after a state lawmaker complained that murder victims never get that chance.

Foster was looking forward to nachos and chicken, the same food served to other inmates the day last year that he made his second trip to the death house, but he never received it. Instead, his attorney tearfully brought him news of another Supreme Court reprieve just before dinner time.

He asked for a doggie bag but was refused. He was put back in the van and returned to death row.

“I’ve already told the chaplain: Take the phone off the hook before 4 o’clock,” he said, anticipating his next trip Tuesday. “I want to get that last meal.”