xix. Nightmare

From my journal, July 26th, 2019:

Last night I had an excruciating nightmare. I had a beautiful big black dog. He was long and loose limbed and a total delight and I loved him deeply.

And I poisoned him. In the dream, there was no intimation that he was sick or dying, I simply poisoned him.

As I gave him the poison, I held his head and looked into his eyes and said “Don’t worry, it won’t hurt at all. I love you.”

But it did hurt. The pain was immense and terrible and my dog was crying and looking at me with huge eyes and I held him as he convulsed. And there was someone nearby who said why is he dying and I couldn’t tell them I’d poisoned him, I was so ashamed and horrified.

All this week I’ve been researching William Kemmler, who was the first man to die in the electric chair. I’ve read all the contemporary newspaper articles and numerous histories, delving deeply before writing the script for the next few pages in the book.

According to one reporter who witnessed William Kemmler’s death, Warden Durston was very gentle with Kemmler and, as he tightened the final strap across Kemmler’s body, said to him, “It won’t hurt you, Bill. I’ll be with you all the time.”

The execution did not go well. Indeed, it was so horrifying that one of the men there as a witness fainted.

Fortunately, today was my regular writing day with my friend, Sophie. I’d just reviewed the first part of her book, that centers around her friend, Calvin Duncan, a man who spent 28 years in Angola Prison for a crime he didn’t commit.

Sophie and I spent a couple of hours going through her work, tossing ideas back and forth.

Then it was my turn to talk about my writing. I immediately burst into deep sobs.

This stuff hurts so much, and all I’m doing is writing about it, researching it. I am twice removed from those who live it.

I think of Sister Helen Prejean who witnessed six executions (some on the electric chair) who is once removed from those who live it.

I think of the people who’ve been executed or who are currently sitting on death row, and their families, and all the people who carry out these atrocities and say to themselves that it’s just part of their jobs. Those who are not removed from it at all.

The work of a first responder

It was so good to have Sophie to talk to the day after I wrote that journal entry, because one of the disturbing parts of my job—hers, too—is that I’m constantly working on a life and death issue and all around me people are reacting with distress and horror to the things we post and tweet and write and talk about, and I rarely experience that distress.

Or, at least, it seems like I don’t. I keep my head down and do the work needed.

It’s only on rare occasions, occasions like the day in July five years ago when I wrote that journal entry and sobbed while Sophie listened and understood, that the deep hurt and horror I feel surfaces.

Or the day in October, 2015, when they almost executed Richard Glossip (his third appointment with Oklahoma’s execution chamber that year!)* Griffin Hardy and I had been working furiously since the beginning of the year on the social media campaign to save Richard’s life. Around us people were telling us in tweets and comments and emails, “I wake up crying about Richard Glossip”. All the while, Griffin and I shed not a single tear.

Until Richard got his reprieve.

That’s when the waves of feeling broke over us. Richard was safe, at least for a while, and we could stand down.

It’s a weird, surreal process, as are so many things around the death penalty.

At those times I realise that, yes, I feel this all the time, I’m entirely human about this, but I don’t let it stop me. I tuck it away where it can’t interfere with the work that needs doing.

In this work, we’re all first responders. Sophie’s a first responder. So, too, are Sister Helen, Sister Marg, Elizabeth and Griffin, my Ministry Against the Death Penalty co-workers. First responders all.

The work of the book

It’s interesting that Sister Helen does it differently. At least, these days she does it differently. Not so when Patrick Sonnier died; she was stressed and sleepless in the lead up to his execution and after she witnessed him die, she vomited outside the gates of Angola.

But over the years she has become laser focused on the task she has given herself, and she channels much of her anguish directly into stoking the inextinguishable fire blazing in her to end the death penalty.

That’s why she wrote Dead Man Walking. It was her way of bringing you, the twice-removed (thrice-removed?) reader into the maelstrom of direct experience.

That’s what we hope to do once more—this time visually turbo-charged—with Graphic Dead Man Walking.

* Richard Glossip has now been brought close to execution nine times, most recently in May, 2023. He remains on Oklahoma’s death row. Christianity Today has an interesting article about him and the changing response of conservative Christians to the death penalty.