Guest Post : The Day You Die in Texas

Death Row, Texas

I am delighted to introduce the following powerful piece written by guest blogger, Kate. 

For most of us, even the terminally ill, it is inconceivable that we would know the exact date and time of our death. Mortality is something none of us really consider until someone close to us dies. Imagine if you will, that you know not only the date and time of your death, but you have a ritual of procedures that last as long as 90 days before you die. If it is your second or third brush with death, it can start as little as 30 days before you die.

You could be looking out your window, chatting with a friend, reading a book or listening to your radio when you hear your "slot" open. The Corrections Officer says "Offender prepare to cuff up". You have to strip down, all the way to your birthday suit. You have to hand your clothes out to be inspected for contraband, then you are watched as you redress. You turn around and kneel to expose your hands behind your back to "cuff up".  The Officers open the door and tell you the Warden is going to see you. You already know this is not because he wants your Christmas "wish list". You are escorted to the Warden.

When you get to the Warden, he reads your death warrant now signed by a Judge and tells you what day you will die. You will get a form called "Notification of Execution Date", it will have a list of information you will need to provide to the Death Row Supervisor at least 2 weeks before your date with death. You will be escorted back to your cell and instructed to pack your property. From there you are moved to the "death cells". This is a cell block that houses only those who have dates with death. Sometimes there are two or three others down there. Sometimes you are all alone. Either way this begins the journey you will make alone.

Any KOP or keep on person medications will be taken from you. 

Close to the 14 days before you die, Ray Hill may pop over to do a media interview. He records these interviews and plays them on the night you are to die during his popular show "Execution Watch". These will be the final words the general public has the opportunity to hear, as Ray Hill will only play your interview if you die. 

14 days before you die, you are presented with your Execution Summary, and your religious orientation statement. You will speak with the Death Row Supervisor. You will discuss things such as whether or not your family will claim your body, or will you be buried in Joe Byrd Cemetery (a rather peaceful place I have had the occasion to visit myself.) While you are doing this, others will be gathering information such as your visitation list, and commissary history. You will answer questions such as who gets your "book" money, and you will fill out a trust fund withdrawal slip in the exact amount of the money on your books. You will tell them what you want to happen to your property, the things you have acquired during your stay. Who gets your books, your hot pot, your radio. You will name those you wish to come watch you die.

You don't get to pick a final meal. Texas wants you to eat the same thing everyone else does.

8 days before you die, you will be moved again. This time to a cell that has a camera watching you 24 hours a day, all 8 days left. Everything you do, will be recorded, every 15 minutes. They are watching for you to resolve to die without their assistance, and they won't have that. The goal is to keep you alive, until you die.

The day you die in Texas starts at 6 am sharp. You are to pack your property. You will give it to the Officers so they can inventory it. This is the last time you will see a cell like this one. You are going to visitation. You will say your goodbye's to loved ones and family. You will see your attorneys and they too will say goodbye. You will get snacks and drinks, and the time will fly. At noon your visitors will have to leave. You will be moved to a cage and stripped. You will be given clean clothes and some slippers.

You are about to leave to die.

You will be taken to a van in shackles and chains. You will be advised that if for any reason the transport van is stopped you will be shot. The van has no windows on the side, but if you strain you can view the rear or front windows for your ride to death. If you are lucky and they transport you over Lake Livingston, you will hear the "thump, thump, thump" of the bridge connectors. You might catch a faint whiff of the water. It will be the shortest ride of your life.

You arrive in Huntsville but can only see big brick walls covered with razor wire and guard towers. When you get inside, to the last cell you will ever be in, you can look to your right and see the end of the gurney where you will die in a few short hours. You can shower. You can make a few phone calls. You will eat dinner and be led to your death bed.

You are removed from the cell to walk to the gurney. You are surrounded by 8 Officers. You have fifteen minutes to live. You may look longingly at the phone by the gurney hoping it will ring. You know the chances of that aren't very good, but you will look anyways. You will also look at the clock. For some reason the second hand seems to move so much faster than you remember ever before now. Tick, Tock.....

When you look to your left you see people behind a glass. Some welcome familiar faces that no doubt stir up emotion. Some with familiar faces that without a doubt bring you some memories. Those are the faces from your trial. The victims family members. They may bring you back to a not so pleasant time. Some are there to watch you die to report it to the public, create a record of the event. You are moments from death and allowed to make a final statement that only the witnesses will hear. The public will read it, but this is the last exercise of your voice.

This is the day you die in Texas.

Thank you for reading. I hope I have at least stirred up a thought that perhaps killing people is what the "bad guys" do, and we are the "good guys". I hope the thought of killing someone repulses you even when the state does so on your behalf. This is a person whose death certificate will be very similar to his victims. Both will list the manner of death as "homicide". More importantly both create more victims. I don't want to coddle the man on the gurney, I just want to recognize that killing the man on the gurney no matter how humane, is still taking a human life and the only thing that separates us from them is how they killed.

Below is the BBC Documentary filmed for the Life and Death Row series - this episode is titled 'Execution' and follows two prisoners in the final weeks before their execution dates. 

Casey Anthony: Justice Denied for Little Caylee Marie?

Little Caylee Anthony with her mother Casey, who many believe killed her

Little Caylee Anthony was first brought to the attention of law enforcement, the residents of Florida and the whole of the United States on July 15th, 2008. Her maternal grandmother, Cindi Anthony, had made a frantic 911 call insisting she hadn't seen her granddaughter in 31 days and that her daughter Casey's car smelled 'odd', like she had had a dead body in there. Cindi Anthony explained that Casey had given her and Caylee's grandfather a variety of excuses to account for their granddaughter's absence over the previous four weeks. However, things had come to a head that day, when Casey had told her mother she hadn't seen Caylee in weeks either. This started a series of lies Casey Anthony would tell, with the most consistent being she had left Caylee with a nanny, appropriately called "Zanny". According to Casey Anthony, when she returned to Zanny's apartment to pick her daughter up nobody was there. According to Casey, she had been too scared she would be in trouble with the police and her family for leaving her daughter with someone she didn't know very well and so she had kept the disappearance to herself,, She went on to insist she had been trying to locate 'Zanny' herself. Police soon found out that Casey Anthony hadn't mentioned her daughter's alleged kidnapping to anyone, not even the man she was having a relationship with at the time. Soon after, a woman, whom Casey Anthony insisted was the mystery nanny was taken in for questioning by the police. She was released when law enforcement were happy she had nothing to do with Caylee's disappearance. Police were also happy that the nanny called Zanny did not exist and Casey Anthony was arrested and charged with murder in October 2008. She pleaded not guilty. 

On December 11th, 2008, a trash bag containing a Winnie the Pooh blanket and the skeletal remains of little Caylee was found in a wooded area not far from the Anthony family home. The Medical Examiner said, due to the state of the remains, he had no choice but to register the death as a 'death by unknown means'. However, he said that three pieces of duck tape found on or around the skull gave him cause to believe Caylee's death was actually a homicide. 

Casey Anthony's trial began on May 24th, 2011. The prosecution told the jury Casey Anthony murdered little Caylee using a mixture of chloroform and duck tape to free herself of the burden of parental responsibility. Prosecutors also sought the death penalty. The first shock of the trial was when the defence, led by Casey's attorney Jose Baez, countered with a story that little Caylee had accidentally drowned in the pool at the family home and that her grandfather and Casey's father, George Anthony, had disposed of the body.  

Casey Anthony's entire defence revolved around her alleged dysfunctional upbringing and the sexual abuse she had allegedly endured at the hands of her father. The defence team did not produce any evidence of the alleged abuse, nor did they have any evidence to support how they said Caylee really died. The prosecution on the other hand appeared to have plenty of evidence supporting their opinion that Casey Anthony was guilty of premeditated murder. A forensic researcher told the jury how he had found compounds associated with decomposition in samples taken from the carpet, spare tyre cover, wheel well and air in Casey Anthony's car. A hair found in the car was also proven to have come from a dead body. Mitochondrial testing proved the hair had come from Casey Anthony's maternal line, as Casey, Cindy and Cindy's mother were allegedly ruled out - that only left Caylee as the most likely owner. The prosecution also submitted records of several Google searches that had been taken off the Anthony family's home computer, the searches included 'how to make chloroform' and 'neck breaking'. According to the computer investigations expert, the word 'chloroform' had been searched 84 times. However, it emerged that the expert made a mistake and had misread the data produced by certain software he had used. It transpired that the word chloroform had only been searched for once. Still determined, the prosecution revealed that the Winnie the Pooh blanket was part of a set from the Anthony home. Altogether 400 pieces of evidence were entered in the trial. 

The trial lasted six weeks and on July 5th, 2011, the jury returned their verdict. Much to the shock of the prosecution, law enforcement and virtually everyone all over America and the World, Casey Anthony was found not guilty of murder. She was also find not guilty of aggravated manslaughter and aggravated child abuse. She was found guilty of four counts of providing false information to the police for - lying about dropping Caylee of with Zanny at her apartment, lying about working for Universal Studios during 2008, lying about informing two other people that Caylee had disappeared and for falsely saying she had talked to Caylee on July 15th 2008, which had led to police expanding the search area and increasing manpower. Although the defence wanted all four counts to be counted as one, so as the sentence would run as one, the judge refused and instead acknowledged that the July to December 2008 search for little Caylee had cost a significant amount in police time, resources and costs. Casey Anthony was fined $1000 for each count and sentenced to one year in prison. However, she was credited with 1043 days for time served and she walked free on July 17th 2011. 

Today, almost seven years after little Caylee Marie Anthony died, Casey Anthony allegedly lives the life of a virtual recluse. An apparent 'victim' of her own notoriety, only the odd picture and interview has surfaced in the press since her trial ended. While some people will show her some sympathy, many more believe the real victim, Caylee Anthony, was denied justice and that her mother literally got away with murder. 

I have to say the Caylee Anthony case frustrates me. The prosecution dropped the ball more than once. The defence were able to counter the prosecution's claims about the chloroform found on the carpet of Casey Anthony's car because the prosecution's expert used a technique never before used in a homicide investigation. Add to that the Google searches mistake and the fact that the hair found in the car, that was said to have come from a dead body, was not 100% reliable, and it is no wonder the jury could not convict beyond a reasonable doubt. Considering the mountain of evidence, it almost feels like the prosecution jumped the gun and they ended up paying for it, or Caylee Anthony did. Her story just did not make sense. What sort of mother waits 31 days to tell police and her family that her 2-year old daughter is missing? I tell you what sort, a guilty one! A mother whose child has a fatal accident calls for help! A mother who has something to hide, comes up with one ridiculous excuse after another in order to cover up what really happened. 

What are your thoughts on the Casey Anthony case? Was she really just a compulsive liar who lost her young daughter to a tragic accident? Or was she really guilty of premeditated murder, driven by a need to have no responsibility in her life? 

Casey Anthony Today