Rick Mofina on the day he went to the execution chamber in the execution chamber in Huntsville, Texas.

Image: Journalists, including the author, gathered in the “Walls Unit” in Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas. (Not completed, provided by the author.)

The article is continued after the display

One day on my trip I was led by crime author from crime from crime on my trip to the exact place in a facility chamber in which convicted murderers took her last breath.

But in contrast to them, I went out to think about the experience. For centuries, philosophers and writers have examined the death penalty and the nature of the executions. Plato viewed it as a instrument for society and suggested that its application were used in cases of irrevocable evil. Aristotle and Aquin supported his careful use to protect society, while Seneca criticized the cruelty of public executions.

In the course of history, from Dante Alighieri to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, writers and dense criticism or inspiration have raised criticism. The latest examples include Charles Dickens, who was horrified after a public execution and his experience in use A story of two cities And Oliver Twist. Victor Hugo, after observing a public guillotine, he channeled his views on the death penalty and decided the agony of a man who was waiting for the execution in his short novel. The last day of a convicted man.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, he lived the terrible moment. After he had been arrested and locked up for alleged subversion, Dostojewski and his fellow prisoners were brought to a place in St. Petersburg. They wore this in Death and were tied to the missions before a firing squad was preparing to shoot them. Suddenly an order came and committed the verdict. Dostoevsky's shaking soul brushed with death changed him. He used it to form his work and to transform his psychological agony through the fear of a man who was waiting in his novel in his novel. The idiot.

Contemporary writers have also examined death cells and executions in their books. Some come to mind; How In cold blood by Truman Capote; A lesson before dying by Ernest J. Gaines; The chamber by John Grisham; and Stephen King's The green mile. And there is Representative of death, the memoirs of a executionerby Robert Greene Elliott, who the electric chair in the death house of Sing Sing Operation.

I am sure I left others.

My moment to examine the last day of a convicted man came when I reported a journalist about a death sentence in the late 1990s. The research of the story led me through Texas to Austin, San Antonio, Houston, Lufkin and Huntsville, where I interviewed people who were associated with events. I will not enter into names or details of the case here. This is not the case with this reflection.

When reporting on other stories, I went to a number of prisons in a series of prisons in Canada, the USA and the Caribbean to talk to rapists and murderers, including personal interviews with murderers in the death cell, hearing reports about their crimes or how their victims have been in their cells. I had never seen an execution. From the beginning, I applied for a media witness – a media witness for journalistic and historical reasons.

My request was rejected what a story is for another day.

During one of my trips, however, officers from the Texas Ministry for Criminal Justice in Huntsville offered me something else: a physical copy of the execution process. There was a condition. I could not report on my news agency that it should be seen as a background to support my reporting.

On one of my trips there was a stay in the 11th hour. I submitted a story. But my next day in Texas was a free day when my departure home from Houston only left the next morning. I called officials in Huntsville and they made their offer well. Soon I was run out of the administration building and to prison, the Texas State Penitory and the so -called “Walls Unit”, were carried out in which executions are carried out.

Decades have passed since then, and some aspects may have changed, but I remember the day when I was enforced the execution process as if I were condemned.

I learned that a number of steps took place in the weeks before my planned execution. I was able to ask for a TDCJ Chaplin or my spiritual consultant during the time of my death in the facility.

In the days before my execution, I was able to apply to donate my body for medical research. Or my family can take precautions through the coordinating funeral home to claim my body.

I would also arrange my ownership or money in my inmate loyalty handicraft. At this point, I also confirm the names on my list of witnesses for the display of my execution.

A week before my execution date, the guards start an execution watch protocol and determine my activities every 30 minutes in the six days before the execution and every 15 minutes for the remaining 36 hours.

Executions are planned for 6 p.m.

On the morning of my execution, after visiting with my family, I am in restrictions and conveyed from the Ellis unit, a extensive complex that holds around 2,500 inmates, including those in the death cell. (I think the death cell is now in the Polunsky unit in Livingston.) The Ellis unit that is still used is located on arable land and is limited by snake swamps. It is several miles north of the Huntsville Walls unit in which the facility chamber is housed.

The unity of Huntsville Walls in the heart of the city was built in the 1840s. Because of its towering walls, it was called “Walls Unit”. According to the prison delivery, the imposing brick walls shoot the draining blood red during the rainstorms.

If I don't have anyone who claims my remains, an open grave is waiting about a mile away for Captain Joe Byrd Cemetery. Well -kept by inmates, which it call it as a cemetery of “undesirable and unpopular”.

When my prison vehicle arrives in the wall unit, it is secured to a door in the secured courtyard. I then accompanied from the vehicle inside to the death house.

It is limited with a handful of empty cells, beige in color.

Inside I am a strip and put clean prison clothes and my death cell.

Beyond my bars there is a small table with a white cloth, a Bible and a phone. I can make a call for goodbye. Around 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. I may have visits from my lawyer, then my spiritual consultant to lead myself through my last hours.

I will probably stare at the two additional dedicated telephone lines on the wall of the death house: one to the governor's office, the other to the General Prosecutor's office. The lines remain open at the last minute during the process in the event of a stay.

Around 4:00 p.m., if I have not rejected, I am served my last meal. (Texas has hired the practice of the last meals since then.)

At this point, my guns are taken to a separate room in prison and further informed about the procedure. Wires for the victim's relatives or victims are also informed.

The two groups are kept apart at any time during the process.

The Texas law enables five journalists to see executions, one from the local newspaper, Huntsville's articleTwo by Wire Services and two from the communities associated with the crime.

When I approached at 6 p.m., I am given the chance to take a shower and received fresh prison clothes. Then the guardian and the prison chaplain or my consultant tell me that all legal reliefs were exhausted.

It's time.

The supervisor will probably tell me that in view of what awaits me, I should be strong when I am captivated with handcuffs to take the last walk of my life – the few steps to the massive beige steel door to the chamber of execution.

At this stage, some men feel their knees and they are designed by the guards, while the door to the small Chamber of Death and the waiting Gurney opens. I am asked to work together by jumping up, whereupon my body is secured at eight points from thick caramel-colored leather belts, two of which secure my extensive arms on the armrests. The armrests are surrounded in white medical adhesive tape and fill the chamber with an antiseptic smell that causes me a child's memory. It was created by a friend whose father was a veterinarian. His office was tied to her home. We would explore it and search for White Medical Tape to use on our hockey sticks. The smell of the armrest of Death Gurney was the same that I reminded of the veterinarian's office.

As soon as I am secured at the Gurney, an IV deals with an IV on my arm and a monitor cable in my heart. I look around the small room, its brick walls, some say coin green, but I remember that they are Robin-Egg Blue. I look at the bright light up and listen to the witnesses at the viewing window next to me. The curtain opens and I see them, mine, the victims and the press, all of whom are separated by partitions.

The supervisor asks if I pray final words as a prison chaplain or my consultant and the process begins.

The IV tubes from my arm run through a small harbor into the executioner's room, in which an anonymous medical officer has the first medication (they have changed) to calm me down. Then I have a second medication to relax my muscles and break down my diaphragm and my lungs.

Finally: The third drug will stop my heart.

The process should take about seven minutes to kill me.

At that time, the cost of the medication was almost 100 US dollars.

After I was declared dead, my death certificate is signed.

My body is then loaded into a corpse car that waits outside the same door to the death house in which I had joined alive.

During this visit I supported this Gurney, which was known to the world of Newswire -Fale photos and on which so many had paid the ultimate price for their crimes.

We were in this room for some time.

My thoughts swirl when details were explained to me. Back then, while my day job was at home that of a crime reporter at my desk, I secretly worked on my first crime novel.

And as every writer knows, every experience finds your way into your work.

***

Visit [ www.rickmofina.com ]