Gnomedex 2006

Vacation SuitcaseFive days. 120 hours. And then I’m on vacation. Sort of. On Wednesday Roger Gardner and I head for Seattle and three days (for me…RG will probably get geek toxic after a day or so) of Gnomedex. I’ll get back just in time for the long 4th of July weekend. I’ll rest up a few days after that and then it’s off to Destin with the lovely Barb where we gather with her clan for a week. While I won’t be completely off the grid, I will be away from the office and I’m really looking forward to it.

Hope to see my pal Jim Mathies, who lives in Destin. Search for some open wi-fi. And try to get better acquainted with the Mac Book. I feel like the guy that’s due to be released from prison in three or four days and is afraid to leave his cell for fear of getting shanked so close to freedom.

Lethal injection: Fatal if not painful

Timothy Johnston was executed this morning at the state prison in Bonne Terre, Missouri. It had been delayed by appeals based on the argument that Missouri’s method of execution (lethal injection) is cruel and unusual punishment. Johnston seemed intent to prove his defense was true as he writhed on the gurney for what seemed like a minute. But some witnesses thought he was moving before the first drug was administered.

If his death was painful, it couldn’t have been much worse than being beaten and kicked to death which is how Tim dispatched his wife back in 1989.

But let’s assume he did fake the pain, as it were. You’re just seconds from crossing over to The Other Side, hoping you know what awaits but no way to know for sure… and you pretend to be in agonizing pain to…what? Make some kind of political statement?! That takes some real focus.

And having one of the corrections officers lean over and whisper, “Dude, we didn’t give you the shot yet” …would take me out of character.

Caged bird sings

Jefferson City prison inmate Irving Berry has written a song for Missouri, entitled “Missouri, Home Sweet Home to Me,” which he calls a gift of honest reconciliation from all of Missouri’s incarcerated sons and daughters. Berry says 90 percent of the inmates he has come into contact with are remorseful. Berry, who has been in prison for nearly 30 years, wrote the song while incarcerated at the Cameron prison. When he was transferred to Jefferson City, he met with fellow inmate Mark Immekus, who wrote the music. They recorded the song with fellow inmates at the Jefferson City Prison. [Missourinet.com]

No way out

Got a call today from a guy I knew from my affiliate relations days. He left the radio business for a couple years but is once again managing a station in southern Missouri. When I mentioned this to Data Daddy David, he said it reminded him those movies where where somebody escapes, is recaptured, and paraded before the other prisoners as the screws take him back to his cell.

“Like in Cool Hand Luke,” I observed.

“I was actually thinking of Steve McQueen in The Great Escape,” DDD replied. “I can see the guy sitting on the floor of his office, bouncing that baseball off the wall, hour after hour.”

I’ve been trying to come up with other movies where someone escapes, is captured, and brought back. Submissions may sent to stevemays@hotmail.com.

Execution journal: Donald Jones

In his capacity as news director for The Missourinet, Bob Priddy has witnessed 15 executions. The most recent was the April 27th execution of Donald Jones, for which Bob produced an “audio journal” that begins as he leaves his motel in Bonne Terre to go to the prison and ends as he prepares to leave the prison about two and a half hours later. Bob telescoped the audio down to about half an hour and some segments have been shifted for context purposes (the reading of the final statement of Donald Jones, for example).

Bob was not allowed to take his recorder to the execution witness area, so he summarizes the events that took place in that approximately 90-minute span. The main voices you will hear are those of Missourinet News Director Bob Priddy, Corrections Department spokesman John Fougere, and Corrections Director Larry Crawford. Voices of various other officers will be heard as part of the process.

James Henry Hampton

On March 25, 2002, I posted some thoughts on the movie Monster’s Ball, including a reference to the execution of James Henry Hampton two years previously (I was a media witness). On Thursday I received an email from someone (no name was provided, just initials) identifying herself as Hampton’s granddaughter.

I have just recently learned that I am the granddaughter of James Henry Hampton, a man you saw executed on March 22, 2000, ironically the night of my junior prom. I’ve been searching for information on him for a while, because my family refuses to tell me even his last name or anything about him. I was only told of his first name and my mother informed me the night of my celebration that my real grandfather was being executed. The only leads I have are the online articles I’ve come across. My friend came across your web log and suggested I e-mail you. So I guess I’ll get to the point. Can you please tell me all that you can remember about my grandfather’s execution? Was he hateful or spiteful? Was he scared and lonely? Regretful? I realize that this man was an atrocity to society but this same man’s blood courses through my veins. I’m the only one in my family who apparently has his color features and love for root beer (only thing mom and grandma ever let slip when I ordered it at a restaurant). So please sir, tell me what you can, to help me in my search for my family’s truths. Thank you for your time.

I replied with a description of the execution and a link to a website with more information about her grandfather. I can only wonder at the woman’s curiosity that she would be moved to ask a stranger to “…tell me all that you can remember about my grandfather’s execution.” As we (the official witnesses) waited for Hampton’s execution, I had many thoughts. That this man might have a granddaughter attending her junior prom was not one of them. Another example of Dr. Weinberger’s Small Pieces Loosely Joined.

First and only woman executed in Missouri

Half a century ago, radios throughout the country were broadcasting the news that a woman had died in Missouri’s gas chamber… the first– and so far, the only –woman ever executed in a state prison. Bonnie Brown Heady of St. Joseph and her lover Carl Hall had been convicted less than a month earlier of the kidnapping and murder of a little Kansas City boy, Bobby Greenlease. Former prison caseworker Gail Hughes remembers the Heady execution in an interview with Bob Priddy.

Jolly good.

One of the reporters that works for our network in Des Moines (Matt Kelley) was interviewed by the BBC today. A British man was arrested in Fort Madison (Iowa) after flying there from England to rendezvous with a 14-year-old Iowa girl. The two met on the Internet three months ago. The man tried to pay his hotel tab with a check from a bank in England… a dispute arose… the cops were called and he mentioned the name of the girl who was staying with him. The girl had been reported missing by her parents as a runaway the day before. The BBC called the Radio Iowa newsroom and asked Matt Kelley to fill them in on the story. The busted Brit, by the way, is a radio deejay who –if convicted– could get 12 years in prison. I’ll see if Matt recorded the interview from his end. Doubt it.

Ernest Tyler

Ernest Tyler was executed on June 24, 1942, at the Missouri State Penitentiary. He was 37 years old and one 39 people executed by lethal gas between 1938 and 1965. He was convicted and sentenced to death for murder. Missouri switched to lethal injection when executions resumed in 1989 but the gas chamber is still located in a small stone building (called the “Death House”) on the grounds of the Jefferson City Correctional Center in Jefferson City.

Tyler, Ernest, 1948

On a wall outside the gas chamber is a group of photographs of the thirty-eight men –and one woman– that died in the gas chamber. I saw the photographs during a tour of the prison a couple of years ago. I was familiar with prison mug shots from working on a website (Capital Punishment in Missouri) but these images were so different from those of the men currently (or recently) on Missouri’s Death Row (they don’t like to call it that). Nobody seemed to know where the originals of the photographs were. I finally found them in the State Archives and the story of how they got there is interesting.

A former warden –upon retiring– took with him the prison files of those executed in the gas chamber. He was concerned the files, and whatever history they might contain, would be lost or discarded. He kept them at his home for a number of years and then turned them over to the State Archives. Where I found them. I spent several Saturday mornings going through each of the files and photocopying as much as I could afford. Along with the photographs, I found newspaper clippings; letters from the inmates; reports by prison personnel; and a variety of gruesome forms and reports related to the executions.

There was nothing remarkable about Ernest Tyler’s file. I don’t believe his case got much coverage in the press, at least there were no clippings. There was, however, a letter from Tyler to his father, a minister in Kansas City, Missouri. Prison officials apparently kept copies of outgoing correspondence. The letter was dated April 15th and Tyler was scheduled to die on April 24th, nine days later. In it, Tyler pleads with his father to come to Jefferson City to visit him before his execution. The context of the letter suggests (to me) that his father was working on some last-minute appeal to save his son. Or maybe he couldn’t bring himself to see his son on Death Row. We’ll never know. Here’s the letter:

“Hello Dad: How are you and mother today? I am not feeling so well. I received your letter, Dad. I am asking you again to please come down here, and please stop telling me about you are waiting on those papers. You may never hear from them, and when you do it will be too late, I will be looking for you or mother one by Sunday, and tell Mrs. Hill that I am praying and hoping Mr. Hill will get well, and also tell Mr. Hill, that I thank her from my heart for what they have done for me. There are no way that I can really tell her how much I thank her for her work. Dad please do something just once I ask, and not as someone else tell you to do. What I mean about I asked you to get someone to take the case back to court, but you had to go fooling around with Mr. Edon and now I am asking you to come down here and you keep telling me about you are waiting on an answer (from) them papers. Dad you will not know anything about what the Governor is going to do until the last day, which is the 23rd of this month, and on the night of the 23rd of this month I am to go down, then you will not have time to get here. So I will be looking for one of you Sunday if not before. I am writing Maron a letter, please give it to her…

I’ll close for this time, dad looking for you soon, your son,

Ernest Tyler, Hall B.B.”

Nothing in the file indicated whether Reverend Tyler visited his son. I’m guessing he did not.