Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, August 21, 1995 TAG: 9508210004
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The commonwealth of Virginia will allow me to decide how I want to die. I have two choices. I can be electrocuted or die by lethal injection. Since I'm a dope addict who used to love slipping a needle into my arm and injecting drugs, I'm going to choose lethal injection.
Over the years, I learned a great deal about what goes on during electrocution, and to be perfectly honest, I find it frightening. I read an opinion former Supreme Court Justice Brennan wrote, detailing what took place when someone was being electrocuted. I kept a copy of it. It sounds like something out of a Stephen King novel:
``Witnesses routinely report that, when the switch is thrown, the condemned prisoner cringes, leaps and fights the straps with amazing strength. The hands turn red, then white, and the cords of the neck stand out like steel bands. The prisoner's limbs, fingers, toes and face are severely contorted. The force of the electrical current is so powerful that the prisoner's eyeballs sometimes pop out and rest on his cheeks. The prisoner often defecates, urinates and vomits blood and drool. The body turns bright red as its temperature rises, and the prisoner's flesh swells and his skin stretches to the point of breaking. Sometimes the prisoner catches on fire, particularly if he perspires excessively. Witnesses hear a loud and sustained sound like bacon frying and the sickly sweet smell of burning flesh permeates the chamber. This smell of frying human flesh in the immediate neighborhood of the chair is sometimes bad enough to nauseate the press representatives who are present.''
On death row, I seldom think about death or dying. I'm too busy fighting the anger and frustration caused by my surroundings. But when I do think about my situation, it's sometimes in dreams - when I manage to fall asleep.
At least three times I've drifted off and dreamed I was dead. I never dream of how I came to be dead, just that I am ... and that I'm buried. This seldom varies in detail.
In the dream, I wake up to find myself in a casket, buried underground. I open my eyes, but there's really nothing to see, for all around is blackness. Imagine this by picturing a framed sheet of black paper. Title it, ``View From the Grave.''
I am aware of the confined quarters, for as I try to sit up I bump my head and learn that, no, sitting isn't permitted.
Next I find I can't roll over to relieve my cramped back. I can't do anything but lie as I am. Never have I experienced such quiet. Absolutely nothing to hear.
Would it be possible to break out of my casket? No, I can't do that, for I can't get any leverage to push upward - and my next thought is of the 6 feet of packed earth atop the casket I'm in. Is my casket inside a concrete grave liner? Oh my, those concrete slabs atop the grave liner are surely sealed. And just how much do they weigh? No, Dennis, you've been buried. Here you are meant to stay! There's no escaping. This is the ultimate escape-proof prison.
I try to open my mouth and find I cannot. The mortician has sewn my lips shut. Realizing that gives rise to another thought: Didn't he do the same to my eyes? I reach up and feel my eyes, one of the few things I can do, and I learn yes, they too are sewn shut.
By now I've made another startling discovery. My face is covered with a full beard, several inches long. I distinctly remember shaving this morning, so how could this be? The beard is most uncomfortable - itchy - and when I try to scratch it, I learn my fingernails are several inches long. Next I learn I can move my feet enough to scratch my ankles with my toes. In doing so, I learn my toenails are also several inches long. This causes me to burst into uncontrollable, hysterical laughter, for a thought has come to mind - of how in the old days cowboys didn't want to die with their boots on. Now I know why!
The flowery funeral home smell and the darkness are maddening. I know my efforts are useless, but can't help but push against the unyielding casket top. ... It's always then that I wake up.
|n n| I long ago learned that once a man is pronounced dead after an electrocution, the death squad will not touch the body for 30 minutes to an hour. The dead person is simply too hot to touch. During this ``cooldown'' period, exhaust fans are on, attempting to rid the chamber of the stench caused by the ``microwaving'' of a human. Members of the squad had earlier stuffed their nostrils with Vaseline and donned surgical masks.
Once the body has cooled enough to be moved, it is ``frozen'' in a sitting position. The back, legs and arms have to be broken so the dead person can lie on a gurney and be taken out of the death chamber. Taken out to where? To the office of a medical examiner where, believe it or not, an autopsy is performed to determine the cause of death. Yes, I agree that doesn't make sense, but that is what is done. A bit of ``gravy'' doctors have had legislated themselves into, and which you pay for.
And it gets better. Many times the doctor performing the autopsy will take body parts for further use and/or study. If you've had time to keep up with the news over the past several months, you don't need proof of that, for it has been there for you to hear about from sources perhaps more reliable (to some) than me!
It was on one such news magazine show that I saw a segment that has me afraid of death by lethal injection. It seems they have drugs that, after injection, leave a person in a deathlike state, yet still alive. The show I saw this on said doctors in Haiti pronounced many people dead after they'd been injected with these drugs, only later to find the person up, walking around, very much alive but in a ``zombie-like'' state. This was attributed to voodoo. In several cases, the one pronounced dead had been buried, the funeral witnessed by many - and later here is that dead and buried person up and walking around in public.
I had my dream at least two or three times, long before seeing this report on television. So I find myself so paranoid about how the commonwealth of Virginia plans to kill (or maybe not) me that I've decided I want my body cremated instead of buried. I simply am not going to chance my dream coming true. A friend of mine promised to scatter my ashes on a high mountain peak in the Great Smoky Mountains on a windy day while the 111/2-minute version of Lynyrd Skynyrd's ``Free Bird'' plays wide open.
If I am killed by the state by lethal injection, then I hope I am indeed dead when they get through with what they do. I'd surely hate to wake up at the time I'm being cremated. If it gets that far, I want to be dead - no pun intended - certain to be dead. I just wish I had a say in the choice of drugs they use in bringing about that condition.
Many people in Mount Airy, N.C., and Patrick County, Va., are outraged that the lethal injection bill became law. Some have gone so far as to say they wanted to pull the switch and watch me fry. To those I'd just say, ``Sorry to disappoint you!''
by CNB