Eight steps away

Eight steps and an open door. That's what brings the fear out in death row inmates. Because until the last minutes of their life, it's something they don't see.

“The inmate has been eight steps away from that table (execution gurney) all day. Eight steps,” said Carroll Pickett, witness to 95 executions. “But it’s been on the other side of that door all day and they haven’t seen it.”

“It’s when the door swings open that it hits them,” Pickett said. “That’s when the anxiety hits. You can see it in their eyes.”

“They all react differently,” he said of both inmates and witnesses. Reporters who are witnesses to the execution and often used to covering tragedy, don’t handle it any better than anyone else, he said.

Pickett should know. As the chaplain for the Texas Correctional system for 16 years, Pickett has seen both sides of the execution room. He’s watched men die and he’s watched witnesses watch men die.

“They all react differently,” he said of both. Reporters, often used to covering tragedy, don’t handle it any better than anyone else, he said.

“Ted Koppel (Former anchorman for ABC’s Nightline) was up close and then he backed away. He didn’t want to watch it,” he said. “He said later on the Larry King show that it was the toughest assignment he ever had. Some reporters will faint. Some vomit. Some turn away,” Pickett said. But none leave unaffected.

No matter what their response to the execution they are watching, Pickett said, witnesses can’t leave the room until the inmate is pronounced dead.

“That door (to the execution room) is closed and locked once the execution begins and it’s not opened, no matter what, until it’s all over,” he said.

Prisoners all react to their execution differently. In Texas All are given the opportunity to ask to speak with their choice of spiritual advisor their last day. Some are Christians. Some are Muslim. Some are Buddhist and some are Wiccan. Almost all want to talk. Some want to dance. Some want to sing. Some take a nap. Most write last letters or speak with family members. Pickett has helped each according to their faith and needs in as far as he was able.

Pickett has seen everything from a prisoner who asked for a witch to help him transition to his next life as a tree once he died, to men who found became Christians in prison and went to their deaths singing hymns of praise and worship.

But regardless of whether they’re resigned to death or not, there’s always a part of them that desperately wants to live.“Preservation of life is a natural instinct,” he said.

“Even if they’re prepared to die something kicks in at the end,” he said. It’s not the tears that come when the inmate walks through the door. It’s not the trembling as they climb on the table. In those final moments, Pickett said, it is seeing the condemned's reaction, that desire to live that converts those who support the death penalty into those that oppose it.