The lethal-injection chamber in
California's San Quentin Prison.
Volunteering for Death:
The Fast Track to
the Death House
by Robert Anthony Phillips
Timothy McVeigh was far from alone in his desire
to speed up his execution date by dropping the appeal of his death sentence.
There are dozens of death row inmates in the United States who have or who are
doing the same thing: ''volunteering'' for death. In the last year,
volunteers have been executed in Nevada, Florida, Indiana, Arkansas, Virginia,
California and Oklahoma.
These volunteers get on the fast track to the
death house by pleading guilty and asking for a death sentence at their trials
or, most often, dropping their appeals after they are convicted.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1976 that
the death penalty was constitutional as long as its imposition was accompanied
by certain safeguards, 90 of the 722 convicted murderers executed in the United
States have been volunteers, according to a recent study conducted by Amnesty
International, the human rights group. More pointedly, about two-thirds of the
voluntary executions have occurred since 1994, AI reports.
Since 1995, 409 convicted killers have been
executed in the United States, with at least 61 of those volunteering for death,
the rights groups says. Overall, the study by AI reported that volunteers have
accounted for one in eight executions in the United States.
Volunteering for a quick death is not a new
phenomenon. It has quietly gone on since 1977 when Gary Gilmore dared Utah to
put him before a firing squad and thousands volunteered to serve on the firing
squad to pump bullets into him.
But there has been renewed interested in the
volunteer phenomena due to McVeigh's execution and a recent spate of voluntary
trips to the death house. During a seven-week period from March 1 to April 21 of
2001, five of the 10 men executed in the United States were volunteers,
including two on the same day in California and Oklahoma.
In some states, it is difficult to be executed
unless you are a volunteer. Of the three executions in Washington State since
1993, two have been volunteers. In Nevada, eight of the nine executed were
volunteers. Of the six executions in Utah since 1977, four were volunteers.
Bizarre Cases
The rush to the death house has sometimes left
criminal defense lawyers scrambling in last ditch legal attempts to save the
lives of often uncooperative and hostile clients or grappling with the ethical
dilemma of whether they should give up and allow their clients to die.
Some volunteer cases take bizarre turns. At
Nevada's last voluntary execution on April 21, one lawyer found himself in the
death chamber asking his client if he wanted to continue his appeals -- as the
condemned man lay on an execution gurney minutes away from being put to death.
Sebastian Bridges, 37, had acted as his own
lawyer at his trial, claiming he was innocent of murdering his estranged wife's
lover. When the jury found him guilty, he told the jurors in disgust to give him
the death penalty. They did. He later decided to protest his death sentence in
an unusual way: by giving up his appeals so that he could be executed. His
lawyers, thinking him quite mad, had advised him that this was not a good way to
rage against the death-penalty machine.
His lawyers were right. For there was Bridges,
lying strapped to an execution gurney in a prison in Carson City, Nev., still
raging that he was innocent of murder, shouting out that he didn't want to die,
and yelling that the state was trying to kill him ''like a dog.''
During the time Bridges lay strapped on the
gurney taking in the last moments of his life, his lawyer assured him that if he
wanted to continue his appeals, his execution would be stopped. Bridges refused.
The chemicals flowed into his body.
''He died protesting his innocence and the
unfairness of the process, yet he was unwilling to stop it,'' said federal
public defender Michael Pescetta, who went into the execution chamber twice to
ask Bridges if he wanted to continue his appeals.
''I've seen other executions and they are
distressing enough,'' said Pescetta, ''but I think this was
significantly stranger for everyone involved...You feel, as a lawyer, that they
are doing this to you. You're trying to get the system to take the person off
death row. You expect that everyone wants help not to be executed. It's
disorienting.''
Some of the volunteers go to their executions
with interesting beliefs. One man believed he was a vampire and could not die.
Another spit at his lawyer and then threatened to slit his own mother's throat
if she tried to block his execution. One said that he was not afraid of death
because he had transported himself, just like Capt. James Kirk used to do on
''Star Trek,'' from death row and into God's hands and found out that
when he died, he would find peace in God's palm. Another thought he had the
ability to bring the dead back to life.
Why Volunteer to Die?
Why are so many admitted or convicted killers
volunteering to be executed? Criminal defense lawyers, psychiatrists and
death-row inmates themselves offer a variety of reasons. Some volunteers are
crazy. Some find God and are convinced that heaven awaits them if they pay for
their crimes with their lives. Some use murder as a means of committing suicide.
Some just can't live with themselves for what they did. Others like the idea
of controlling a system they really have no control over.
But, the most prevalent reason cited is that life
on death row is not really life.
Twelve states have no death penalty, but of the
38 that do most isolate condemned prisoners in high-security cellblocks
within maximum security prisons away from the general prison population, keeping
them locked in their cells up to 23 hours a day. Studies have shown that
prisoners who are isolated become severely depressed and delusional, possibly
making them want to end their lives and give up their appeals. Even if the death
row inmates are not insane, the isolation and restrictions imposed lead some to
want to end their lives, rather than living in such conditions, defense lawyers
and death row inmates say.
Throw in the poor quality of legal representation
available to the vast majority of death-row inmates, and any realistic legal
remedy is virtually moot. In July The New YorkTimes reported that
''dozens of inmates on death row lack lawyers for their appeals… . The
situation has dire consequences, experts say, because two out of three appealed
death sentences are set aside because of errors by defense lawyers at trial or
prosecutorial misconduct.'' The Times report was based on the most
comprehensive death penalty study completed to date, a study conducted by
lawyers and criminologists at Columbia University. For inmates with ineffective
counsel or no counsel at all -- even the innocent ones -- the reality of
spending the remainder of their lives in isolation with no hope of parole can
make the prospect of death inviting. Some inmates come to view their executions
as their great escape.
Robert Johnson, an American University professor
who has studied men on death row, says it is common for condemned prisoners to
think about giving up.
''We do have a number of people on death row
who are mentally ill, and that explains the extremity of their crimes,''
Johnson said. ''Mentally ill people are more vulnerable to stress, less
intact psychologically and less able to cope with adversity. They are more
likely to be harmed by being isolated because it leaves them alone with their
problems.
''For a number of inmates, death row is
living death. It becomes unbearable and execution is a less painful
option.''
That brings up another factor some experts cite
to explain the dramatic upshot in volunteers: Inmates don't fear execution by
lethal injection as much as they did by other means, particularly by electric
chair.
Of the 38 death-penalty states, only Alabama
persists in deploying the electric chair; all the others have moved to lethal
injection as the primary means of execution.
''The electric chair was feared,'' said
William Laswell, an assistant public defender in Broward County, Fla., who
predicts that still more prisoners languishing on death row will want to end
their agony and take the easy way out -- by simply being injected and going to
sleep. ''We now give them an option of having their head burned and nose
broke in the electric chair or taking a nap with lethal injection. There are a
lot of guys who simply don't want to spend the rest of their lives in prison
and don't want to die in prison.''
Laswell was referring to a 1990 Florida execution
in which flames shot from the head of Jesse Tafero during his electrocution and,
later, another Florida case in which a murderer being put to death in the chair
had blood run from his nose and down his chest. (To view photos of this
execution, click here.) Florida now uses lethal injection as
its
primary means of execution.
But the argument that execution is no longer
feared by some condemned prisoners didn't stop three Alabama killers from
dropping their appeals and going to their deaths in the state's electric
chair.
The Depravity of Death Row
Anthony Boyd, a death-row inmate in Alabama who
is fighting his conviction, knew the three Alabama inmates who gave up their
appeals and were executed. Boyd believes their decisions were based on the
isolation on death row and the anguish caused by having a death sentence hanging
over their heads.
''When you walk into this camp, you can feel
the death,'' said Boyd. ''It's like walking into a graveyard...Fathers
watch their kids grow up form here. Guys watch as family members abandon them
and family members die off. You're treated like animals.''
Boyd said the three of the men --Pernell Ford,
Steve Thompson and David Duren -- told him why they wanted to be executed. Duren
was executed in January 2000; Thompson in 1998; and Ford in June 2000.
''Pernell Ford I knew personally and
considered a real friend,'' Boyd said in a letter. ''He also attempted
suicide by cutting his wrist. After that we had a chance to talk. I asked him
why would he do this -- attempt suicide and drop his appeals. He just simply
said, 'I'm tired, homeboy.' See, Pernell had been here for about 13 years
and came when he was in his teens. Pernell also believe he was a god...Steven
Thompson had given his life to The Lord, and decided he was just simply ready to
go. David Duren said he had grown weary from everyone dying around him, so he
too gave up.''
Massie: Death Better Than Prison
In California, two-time killer Robert Lee Massie,
who had first tried to give up his appeals since 1979, was executed on March 27.
Spending the rest of his life on death row was on the mind of Massie when he
decided he'd rather die than spend life behind bars. He said death was a
''rational'' decision over life behind bars in a maximum security
prison.
''Even if I were to win an appeal, I will
never again see the outside of prison,'' Massie said in a letter to the San
Francisco Chronicle on March 13. ''I have lived in prison most of my
adult years, nearly 30 on death row. I am a rational man. I do not consider
foregoing the raptures of another decade behind bars to be an irrational
decision.''
Massie had been sentenced to death in the early
1970s, but had his sentence commuted and was later released on parole after the
U.S. Supreme Court found the death penalty unconstitutional. After he was
released, Massie murdered a man and found himself back on death row -- this time
with the death penalty reinstated by the courts.
Suicide by Execution
Lawyers and psychiatrists also point to
documented cases over the years where murder is used as a tool to ''commit
suicide by execution.'' Such is the case with Daniel Colwell in Georgia, who
wants to die in the state's electric chair and murdered two people to
accomplish his goal.
Colwell told a jury that he never had the courage
to kill himself, and believed that by shooting and killing two people at random
in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Americus in 1996, the state would fulfill his death
wish by executing him.
At his 1998 trial, Colwell, diagnosed with
schizophrenia and other mental problems, was found competent to direct his own
defense. He pleaded guilty to the murders. He boasted about the slayings to the
jury. He threatened jurors and their families if they did not recommend a death
sentence. The jury obliged.
Michael Mears, his lawyer, has appealed to the
Georgia Supreme Court asking it to bar the execution of the mentally ill --
which he believes Colwell is. Colwell has fought back, making a failed attempt
to hire a lawyer to replace Mears to expedite his execution.
''It's been a nightmare fighting the judge
and fighting Daniel,'' said Mears, who believes Colwell should not have been
allowed to represent himself. ''We are being forced to be instruments of
Daniel's suicide.''
Even Daniel Bibler, an assistant district
attorney in Sumter County, Ga., who helped prosecute Colwell, said the admitted
killer had no other motive other than his desire for his own death. But, Bibler
stressed that Colwell's act was more important that his motive.
''We took him as a calm, communicative person
who intelligently planned out something, carried it out with full knowledge of
what he as doing and understood the consequences of what he was doing,''
Bibler said. ''We never disputed that he had been diagnosed with a mental
disorders. But clearly, he was not delusional and clearly he was in touch with
reality.''
Is There a Place for the Volunteer?
Are some defense lawyers being elitist and
arrogant in trying to legally frustrate a condemned killer's death wish? Is
there a place in the criminal justice system for a condemned killer to volunteer
for death, or must each case -- even the most hopeless ones -- be fought to the
legal limits.
Some lawyers believe there is a place for a
condemned man to have the ''dignity'' of deciding that he or she wants
to be executed, providing the inmate is not insane.
Michael Mello, a Vermont Law School professor and
expert on the death penalty, believes there is a place in the capital-punishment
system to allow competent, condemned prisoners to give up their appeals and be
executed rather than languish for years on death row or have no hope of freedom.
He argues that many defense lawyers are forcing
their own political choice -- opposition to capital punishment -- and blinding
themselves to the duties to their client.
''The conventional wisdom is that clients
never freely and voluntary choose to be executed,'' Mello said. ''That
they are driven by their circumstances and the lawyers have a paternal or
maternal role to protect their client form himself if necessary...I think that's
dead wrong. It's a simple lack of human empathy on behalf of the lawyer,
arrogance and elitism. We represent clients, not issues.''
Melvin I. Urofsky, a professor of history and
public policy at Virginia Commonwealth University who has studied the issue of
volunteers, also believes that because most death-row inmates are guilty of
murder and have no hope of freedom, execution is a valid option for them. He
also compares these condemned murderers with terminally ill patients who choose
to end their lives.
''Some people do not like the idea...of
spending the rest of their lives in a six-by-eight- foot room,'' Urofsky
said. ''For them, death is the preferable option.''
But most criminal defense lawyers believe that
volunteers must be protected from ''committing suicide'' and not be
allowed to control the criminal justice system by demanding execution. They say
that anyone seeking his or her death cannot be competent.
While acknowledging a client's right to direct
his own defense -- even if that means pleading guilty and asking for a death
sentence -- most defense lawyers believe execution is never in the best interest
of a client.
''If someone is standing on the edge of a
cliff saying he wants to shoot himself and to please hand him a gun, do you do
it?'' asks Susan Cary, a public defender in Florida who counsels death row
inmates.
''Remember, the appeals are for society, not
the prisoners,'' adds Abraham J. Bonowtiz, an anti-death penalty activist in
Florida, where two of the last three persons executed have been volunteers.
''Appeals are for us to make sure we followed our own law. When appeals are
waived, society is denied the full and fair review of a process filled with
mistakes.''
Court Challenge to Death-Row Conditions
Julie Hall, an Arizona lawyer who has helped
represent three volunteers (two of whom were executed), said that she has yet to
see a case where the inmate seeking death has been competent to make that
decision.
Hall blames death-row conditions as the primary
reason why so many already mentally ill, condemned inmates are being
''tortured to death'' and volunteer for execution. Authorities have
estimated that as many as 10 percent of all death row inmates suffer from mental
illness.
''The conditions in prison are getting
worst,'' Hall said. ''People need to understand that death-row inmates
are not being housed in a country club. People are being put in long-term
solitary confinement that the human mind is not wired to survive. Another factor
is that you have people in jail who are severely depressed and not being
treated. They are not making competent decisions.''
Hall and another lawyer have brought a unique
case to federal court. A federal appeals court has ordered a district court in
Arizona to hold a hearing to determine whether one of Hall's clients,
death-row inmate Robert Comer, 44, was influenced into volunteering to end his
appeals because of the isolated conditions he has been kept in for more than a
dozen years.
In a case being watched closely by other criminal
defense lawyers, Hall derailed the condemned killer's death wish by convincing
the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit last June that Comer's
isolation on death row may have played a part in his volunteering for execution.
While defense lawyers routinely challenge the
competency of condemned inmates wanting to be executed, Hall said that to her
knowledge, it is the first time a federal court has ordered a hearing on whether
conditions on death row may have caused a condemned prisoner to volunteer.
Hall previously tried to head off the executions
of two other death-row volunteers, Donald Miller and child killer Daren Bolton,
but both were eventually executed. In the Miller case, Hall was appointed to
represent the condemned man's lawyer as his ''next friend'' in an
attempt to continue appeals.
Hall said that Miller suffered severe depression
most of his life and the isolation on death row was ''tortuous'' and
inflamed his desire to die.
''There is no way that combining his mental
illness and the conditions in that prison that he could make a voluntary
decision to be executed,'' Hall said.
A key to the Comer case will be psychiatric
studies and testimony arguing that prisoners kept in long-term maximum security
housing suffer anxiety, confusion, a sense of unreality, depression and are
prone to violent behavior. Isolation has more dramatic affects on condemned
prisoners already suffering from mental illness, the experts say.
Like most death penalty states, Arizona's
condemned prisoners are isolated in a special management unit. Arizona death row
is located in Florence, with condemned prisoners fed in their cells, locked down
23 hours a day and allowed no contact visits.
Camilla Strongin, a spokeswoman for the Arizona
Department of Corrections, said condemned prisoners are isolated from the
general prison population because they have proven by their crimes that they are
a danger to other prisoners and guards.
Comer was sentenced to death for shooting a man
to death at a campground in 1987. Following that murder, Comer then went to
another campsite, hog tied another man and raped his girlfriend in front of him,
prosecutors say.
At his sentencing in 1988, he was brought in
shackled to a wheel chair and naked, except for a cloth covering his genitals.
Since deciding to end his appeals, Comer has blamed Zionists for trying to save
him and asked the judge who sentenced him to sign his death warrant.
Before being sentenced to death in Arizona, Comer
had spent years in isolation in a California prison for misconduct while serving
a sentence for other crimes, Hall said. Since arriving on Arizona death row in
1988, Comer has been cited for 37 violations of prison rules including
possession and manufacture of weapons and arson, prison officials said.
Pati Urias, a spokeswoman for the Arizona
attorney general's office, said that prosecutors believe Comer is competent to
make the decision to die and that death-row conditions are fair and humane.
Comer refused to be interviewed for this article,
telling a prison official that ''I hate reporters more than lawyers.''
That's Why They Call It Death Row
Victim's rights groups, such as the Texas based
Justice for All, argue that many of the condemned prisoners who volunteered for
death admitted to their crimes and were simply acquiescing to the punishment.
The group has no sympathy for claims that depression, isolation and mental
illness are to blame.
''Death row is just that: death row,''
said Dianne Clements, president of Justice for All, a criminal justice reform
group that favors the death penalty. ''We are constitutionally bound to
provide them with adequate health care, adequate housing, and adequate
protection against harm or injury. We do that and we should not be cajoled or
bullied into creating a resort atmosphere.''
Clements also points out that in all the cases of
volunteers, the courts have had competency hearings and the condemned prisoners
had been found to be sane.
A Tough Decision for Defense Attorneys
Some criminal defense lawyers admit that they can
see a client's point of view in asking to be executed, but it is still
unsettling.
In Oklahoma, Barry Derryberry, an assistant
public defender, who was one of three defense lawyers assigned to defend
death-row volunteer Ronald Fluke, found himself torn between his hatred of the
death penalty and respect for the 52-year-old Fluke's wish to be executed.
''By applying the brakes to the client's
wishes to race to the death chamber, lawyers protect ...the client's rights to
not be unlawfully executed and to decide what the defense's goal shall
be,'' Derryberry said. ''This role prevents the system from degenerating
into a suicide mill.''
''But I can understand the pragmatic choice
one has under a death warrant,'' Derryberry added. ''What kind of life
is that to lead?''
Fluke pleaded guilty to murdering his wife and
two children, waived his appeals and was executed on March 27, saying it was
just punishment for his crimes. Three days into jury selection in his trial,
Fluke had informed his lawyers that he wanted to plead guilty and asked to be
sentenced to death.
In Virginia, lawyer Thomas Blaylock said he
respected the decision of his client, Thomas Akers, executed on March 2 for
beating a man to death with a bat. Akers had pled guilty and asked for a death
sentence, promising to kill again.
''I thought to myself, 'Who am I to tell
him he can't do this,' '' Blaylock said. ''On one hand, I had a
competent client who made the decision and the other side of me is saying nobody
should want to do that...I have to fight for these people because it makes it
easier for the system to execute other people. It was really bothering me not
fighting for my client...''
Blaylock, like Florida's Laswell, believes more
inmates will be volunteering for death on the nation's ever expanding death
rows.
''We've got these supermax prisons where
everything is restricted so you'll see more guys volunteering rather than
staying inside them,'' Blaylock said. ''Taking a shot (lethal injection)
is not as bad for them.''
But when a criminal defense lawyer decides to
help an admitted killer die, he can become a pariah in the defense community.
Lawyer Helps Client Die
That's what happened in Oklahoma in 1993, when
then Tulsa County chief public defender Johnie O'Neal decided not to try to
block the execution of Thomas Grasso, a two-time killer who told him that he'd
rather be executed than spend life in prison.
O'Neal said his decision resulted in death
threats, hate mail and damaged his relationships with some criminal defense
lawyers. Grasso, 33, was executed in 1995.
''My belief that people shouldn't be
executed had to be put aside, ''O'Neal said. ''Actually, I am proud of
the fact that I was willing to do it and could do it.''
Grasso murdered an elderly woman in New York and
was sentenced to 20-years-to-life prison sentence. Grasso later confessed to the
unsolved murder of an 87-year old woman in Tulsa in 1990, saying he wanted to
return to Oklahoma, plead guilty and be sentenced to death.
O'Neal allowed Grasso to plead guilty to murder
and offered no mitigating evidence that could have saved him from a death
sentence. O'Neal drew the wrath of defense lawyers when he appealed to the
Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals asking the court to allow Grasso to waive his
mandatory appeals and be executed. The court denied the request, although the
death sentence was upheld.
But other defense lawyers accused O'Neal of
violating ethical rules and filed a legal challenge to try to block the
execution.
''It bothers me and still does,'' said
Robert Ravitz, the public defender for Oklahoma County. ''Why do you need a
lawyer to advocate somebody for a death sentence? You don't have a
constitutional right in the Untied States to get a death sentence -- yet.''
Some Current Volunteer Cases
Scan the death row rosters in most death penalty
states and, nowadays, you'll find men and women seeking to quicken their trips
to the death house.
One is Kevin Scudder, an Ohio death-row
inmate convicted of murdering a 14-year-old girl. He is fighting attempts by his
lawyer to keep him alive. He scoffs at anti-death- penalty advocates who want to
keep him from the execution chamber, wishing they could watch him die.
''They don't give a shit about me
personally,'' Scudder said in a telephone interview. ''I wish they had a
gas chamber in this state so they can see me flop around like that rabbit on the
television show. Did you see that on television?''
He insists he is not crazy in wanting to die,
saying that God is calling him home.
''I am far from crazy. I have decided to
waive my appeals because God is calling me home. I know he is calling me home
because he would never have let the State of Ohio put me on death row for
something I never did if he didn't want me to come back home.''
Another high-profile murderer seeking a quick
execution is Aileen E. Wuornos, a former prostitute turned serial killer.
She was sentenced to death for killing six men in Florida and now believes she
has the ''right'' to be executed.
In April, she wrote a letter to the Florida
Supreme Court asking the justices to end her appeals and allow her to be
executed, saying keeping her alive violates her constitutional rights.
Wuornos said in the letter that she was guilty,
and enough tax money has been squandered in keeping her alive.
On the federal level, McVeigh wasn't the only
inmate seeking to die. David Paul Hammer, another federal prisoner awaiting
execution in Terre Haute, Ind., believes that his execution would be better than
spending the rest of his life in prison.
Hammer pleaded guilty to strangling a cellmate
and knows he will never regain his freedom -- even if his death sentence is
overturned. He was serving more than a 1,232-year sentence in Oklahoma after
breaking out of prison and shooting a man following a carjacking. He had been
sentenced to prison originally for an incident at an Oklahoma hospital in which,
after becoming angry that he wasn't receiving treatment for a drug problem,
grabbed a nurse and held her hostage.
Oklahoma authorities described Hammer as a
troublesome prisoner who committed scams while behind prison walls. These
included soliciting phony donations for a religious ministry, sending
threatening letters to judges, two escapes, and phoning in a bomb threat to the
state capital. Prison officials, in order to control Hammer, placed him in a
specially constructed isolation cell. His lawyer said that Hammer caused trouble
in prison to force Arizona corrections officials to transfer him to federal
prison, which he viewed as a better place to serve his time.
Hammer got his wish. He was transferred from the
Oklahoma prison system into the federal prison system in 1993, and then sent to
various federal facilities, in California, Kansas and finally Pennsylvania,
where he admitted to strangling his cellmate.
Hammer views his execution as his ''final
escape.''
''I've spent half my life in prison for the
most part,'' Hammer said in a telephone interview from the prison. ''I
don't live here. I merely exist. There is a big difference in living and
existing. In order to live, your life has to have a meaning, a purpose.''
Hammer, 41, had given up his appeals and was
scheduled to be executed on Nov. 15, 2000. But he changed his mind and continued
his appeals. In early April, the Supreme Court rejected his latest appeal.
Since the interview, Hammer, a diabetic,
attempted to commit suicide by injecting insulin directly into a vein.
Rather Death than Life
But inmates with a death wish don't always get
what they want.
In Florida, Edward Gryczan, sentenced to life in
prison in 1998 for murdering his mother, asked for a death sentence at his
trial. Although the jury recommended that he be executed, his lawyer fought him
by demanding hearings on Gryczan's competency. A trial judge later overturned
the death sentence, and instead sent him to prison for life.
Three years into his life prison sentence,
Gryczan, 54, said he'd still rather be executed than spend life behind bars
without the psychiatric treatment he believes he needs.
''I think of the crime all the time, Gryczan
said. ''I think of my mother all the time. If I was sane at the time, then I
deserve to die. I can't see spending the rest of my life like this, waiting to
die of old age. Prison is not a place for the old.''
