Exoneree: Guantanamo Bay Is "Peanuts Compared to What's Going On In" Texas

By Leslie Minora

As "the death chaplain" at Huntsville prison, Reverend Carroll Pickett has counseled 95 prisoners, one at a time, on the day the state has scheduled to end their life. Death by lethal injection, the chaplain found, is not a quiet exit. It's torturous. It's not fool-proof. And there's no guarantee that everyone put to death is guilty.

"That cruel and unusual punishment starts the minute they walk in the death house ... It's not painless. It is not painless," Pickett said last night at SMU, where was joined for a panel discussion by death row exonerees Anthony Graves and Clarence Brandley. (Brandley also spoke at an SMU death row exoneree panel last year).

"There are botched executions. I've been there. I saw it," Pickett said.

He supported capital punishment when he started his job in 1982, but death after tortuous death wore away at him. "This one young man, they tried and they tried and they tried, and they couldn't find a place to put a needle in that would flow properly," he said.

The man had abused drugs enough to know how to effectively tap into his veins. He was permitted to sit up and demonstrate the most effective way to put him to death. His instructions worked, the lethal liquids flowed, and his life drained. After 45 minutes of being stuck with needles, "he just wanted the pain over," Pickett said. ...

Across the United States, 3,200 people are currently on death row; Texas has put the most people to death "out of any jurisdiction anywhere in the world," said Dr. Rick Halperin, SMU human rights program director.

"The death penalty is not an act; the death penalty is a process ... of psychological torture that either can conclude in an execution or can conclude in a release," Halperin said. He added that the death certificates filled out when prisoners pass away have several options under "Cause of Death," and that a specific box is checked when a prisoner is purposefully put to death: homicide.