Life Vs. Death Penalty: Not An Easy Topic

Last Execution Was In 2005

Thirty-five years ago, I was in an old broken down car headed down U.S. 65 from Pine Bluff to Varner, Ark., to write a story.

Varner, you see, was the site of the State Prison System's “Safe Keeping” Unit. That “safe keeping” moniker was the state's internal code for the maximum security prison. This was nearly a decade before the “Tucker Super Max Prison,” was built.

Back then, in 1976, the United States Supreme Court had just allowed/overturned a ban it had on the death penalty in the nation.

A fellow named Gary Gillmore, out in Utah, was about to be executed.

Somehow amid all the legal wrangling about the death penalty debate, I got permission from the state prison system leadership and some of the death row inmates and their attorneys to conduct interviews. A photographer friend of mine, Phil Feinstein, from the newspaper accompanied me. I had questions then. I still have questions today. Most of the inmates who had agreed to speak with me were much younger looking than I had imagined. They were not “rough looking louts, or wild bug-eyed crazies,” but short, thin, rather dimwitted guys.

The photographer and I produced a feature page about these fellows. All were in for some really horrible, some almost unspeakable, crimes.

I have sporadically thought about these fellows over the years — only two or three that I recall were actually executed by the state.

Most had their sentences commuted to life in prison. I am not sure if any of them are still alive inside those prison walls today.

Today's debate about “the mix of chemicals” used to put death row inmates to sleep before the lethal injection chemicals are pumped into their veins to stop their heart from beating, rages on in the press and courtrooms in this state and nation.

A new group of names — all men — are involved in this ongoing litigation. They are Jack Harold Jones, Stacey Eugene Johnson, Kenneth Williams, Don Davis, Jason Farrell McGehee, Terrick Terrell Nooner, Alvin Bernal Jackson, Bruce Earl Ward, Marcel Wayne Williams and Frank Williams Jr.

At issue are the drugs used in the death chamber procedures. In these recent cases in Arkansas, attorneys quibbled over “who has the power to choose these drugs.”

That issue is still unclear, according to the litigation.

What is clear is that the list of victims of these crimes are rarely mentioned in the debate. Their names, for the record, are Mary Phillips, Carol Jean Heath, Dominique “Nikki” Hurd, Cecil Boren, Jane Daniel, John Melbourne, Scot Stobaugh, Sgt. Scott Grimes, Rebecca Doss, Stacey Errickson and Clyde Spence.

Six of these fatal victims were women, five were men.

Guns were used in only four of these deaths; one victim was stabbed; the others were strangled to death by the hand of their killer.

If this is a tough column to read, well, it is a tough one to write.

The State of Arkansas has put 27 inmates to death since the death penalty was again renewed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976. The last execution in the state was back in 2005.

Will we ever answer the broader question? I doubt it. It seems like the wrestling over issues such as making convicted men “comfortable with drugs, so they feel no pain” before they go to meet their maker, is to be debated.

I can't say the same debate took place for those who were sent to an early and unexpected death.

The bigger and broader question to this debate still remains, don't you think?

Maylon Rice