Man talks about succumbing to PTSD after working on death penalty tie-down team.

[grantdevine]

Fred Allen is no shrinking violet. He's a tough good ol' boy from Texas who worked as a guard in Huntsville and participated in over 100 lethal injections on the tie-down team. He broke one day, while at home in his work shop. Suddenly he was reliving the faces of all those he helped put to death. Here's a transcript from the 20 minute radio documentary "Witness to an Execution," which is essentially nothing more than the voices of those who work in that system. It's raw and non-partisan, and narrated by the warden of the prison.

To anyone who is on the fence about the death penalty, you need to read this and/or listen to this 20 minute radio program here:
http://soundportraits.org/on-air/witness_to_an_execution/

The damage wreaked by the death penalty is something seldom understood or debated by those with opinions either way. To fully understand it, we need to face that damage. This recording helps in that.

Fred Allen:

All of the sudden something just triggered in me and I started shakin’ and I walked back into the house and my wife asked “what’s the matter?”, and I said I don’t feel good.
And tears, uncontrollable tears was commin’ out of my eyes and she said “What’s the matter?” and I said I just though about that execution that I did two days ago and everybody elses that I was involved with, and what it was was, something triggered within and just, everbody, all these executions all of a sudden all sprung forward.
Just like takin’ slides in a film projector and having a button and just pushing a button and just watchin’ over and over – him, him, him. I don’t know if it’s a mental breakdown, I don’t know if it probably would be classified more as a traumatic stress similar to what individuals in the war had. You know, they’d come back from the war and it might be 3 months it might be 2 years it might be 5 years and all of a sudden they relive it again and all that has to come out.
You see, I can barely even talk, cause I’m thinkin more and more of it. You know. There was just so many of ‘em.
My main concern right now is these other individuals, I hope this doesn’t happen to them. The ones who participate, the ones that go through this procedure now. I will say honestly, and I believe very sincerely, everyone has a stopping point. Every one has a certain level. That’s all there is to it.

[Jamastiene]

1. K&R

:kick:

[grantdevine]

8. Love your sig line! n/t

[spoony]

2. Wow

k/r

[pnwmom]

3. This is a greatly needed perspective. Thank you. n/t

[grantdevine]

4. Thankyou for taking the time to check it out. n/t

[gratuitous]

5. State-sponsored homicide doesn't just victimize the deceased

There is a whole parade of victims for each of these homicides.

[grantdevine]

13. Exactly. And besides those asked to kill for the state, it's a myth that..

..the victims of families get "closure" or justice or peace or whatever from the death penalty. What they get is a long drawn out process during which they can't begin their closure, followed by another killing that they can forever associate with their loved one.

[grantdevine]

6. Thanks 4 the votes all. The appreciation is appreciated.

I've noticed the death penalty is an area where seemingly progressive persons sometimes miss the mark. The urge to want revenge/justice for victims is something that can easily overshadow truth and sense.

Cheers.

[grantdevine]

7. Shameless kick. n/t

[grantdevine]

9. yeah, fuck this.

[defendandprotect]

10. Nature has a way of getting messages about violence thru ....

[ColbertWatcher]

11. k+r, n/t

[pnwmom]

12. kick!

[smokey nj]

14. Thanks for this

[asteroid2003QQ47]

15. Fred Allen's tragic affliction is...

a condemnation of method alone, few death penalty proponents would deny that the death penalty is not problematic.
When a perp (by actions) opts out of the human community the Bleeding Hearts rush to play 'God' and deny the perp his/her chosen path.
A pox on the lot of them!

[olegramps]

16. If the death penalty is to be a deterrent then it should be public.

What has always struck me as odd it that it is administered in near secrecy. A few witnesses and some members of the family. And even then the windows are covered when the condemned are actually electrocuted or gassed. I suppose that it is the same when drugs are used to kill the condemned nowdays.

If it is to be a deterrent, then it should be a big public spectacle. Maybe held in those huge football stadiums seating 80-90 thousand. Vendors could sell programs with pictures and detailed histories of the crimal's pass slid into a life of crime that started out skipping Sunday School. Probably hanging would be the most effective. The good seats should be reserved for families that bring their kids. Nothing should be shielded from view. The condemned "dancing on the end of a rope" would be a great deterrent that would stick in those kids minds for a life time.

I think that it would go over especially big with the bible thumbing Southerners. They really get turned on about all those stories in Good Book about how God assisted his chosen people in slaughtering thousands of men, women and children, except of course, those young girls that were virgins who they could keep for their own pleasure.

[Lyric]

17. Execution cannot be public, or it would be unconstitutional.

Big, public execution = putting someone's death on display, utter humiliation to their human dignity = cruel and unusual punishment = unconstitutional.

Also, making it public would force bloodthirsty American vengeance-junkies to offend their prissy sensibilities by actually SEEING the violence and pain that they inflict on condemned inmates. This would make it more difficult to find unbiased juries willing to hand out a death sentence.

If they didn't keep it private and closed-off, there wouldn't BE a death penalty before too long.

[asteroid2003QQ47]

18. For starters, decorate every utility pole in the nation with a corporatist/politician and...

soon there likely would be little or no NEED for a death penalty!
Your reasoning is flawed, oktoberain.

[Lyric]

19. How is my reasoning flawed, pray tell?

I seriously hope that you haven't made the mistake of thinking that I am anything but a vehement opponent of the death penalty.

[asteroid2003QQ47]

20. You might win the unconstitutionality argument but...

both public and (more recently) private have have been tried and found wanting from my perspective. Your willingness to re-attach 'human dignity' to someone who simultaneously discarded said dignity along with their right to remain in the human community forces me to consider that your perspective might be more complex than that of the typical bleeding heart. An ever growing segment of the population stands to profit in some way from incarcerating an increasingly higher percentage of the population than the present one in a hundred.

My reassessment forces me to apologize for calling your reasoning into question.
For whatever reason you seek to imprison more while I seek to imprison less, it's a simple matter of differing perspectives. :toast:

[varkam]

21. Few problems with that

First, it also would need to be brutal, applied uniformly (currently, few capital defendants get the DP), and not allow much time for an appeal.

In addition, though, even if all that is granted, the very notion of deterrence rests on the assumption that people are rational and self-interested. Many times, when people kill other people, they're not acting out of reason but rather out of emotion.

Of course, though, that sort of thing would be inconsistent with life in a "civilized" society. You know, 8th amdmt and all.

[demokatgurrl]

22. The death penalty is not a deterrent

There are plenty of statistics. For example we have much higher rates of violent crimes than many countries who don't have a death penalty. All it serves is as a means for revenge, and even worse, a feather in the cap of an immoral prosecutor.

The death penalty is murder, period. Who are we to murder someone- to a person who believes in God, isn't it's God's prerogative to decide someone should die? And for nonbelievers, if there is no almighty god deciding that someone should lose his life, why the hell should any human decide?

[asteroid2003QQ47]

24. why the hell should any human decide, indeed!

So, you would build a prison on every block and imprison
still more in the nation with the highest percentage of it's
population already imprisoned?

[BreweryYardRat]

26. Higher rate of violent crime does not necessarily correllate with the presence/absence of DP.

This unfortunate country of ours has a lot of social/cultural/economic problems, that, if fixed, might cut down on the violent crime rate.

The death penalty is a tricky thing to administer in our society, given that non-whites are likelier to get it, and their cases are also likelier to have a higher risk of procedural issues such as forced confessions or incompetent public defenders, and/or moral issues -- say, a clearly bigoted jury/judge/prosecutor.

I'm in favor of it being applied swiftly in cases where there's crystal clear evidence of guilt -- for example, unfaked video, like that one bastard a while back who murdered most of a family, kidnapped the youngest son + daughter, and videotaped himself raping them before killing the boy. Convict him, give him a few chances to appeal if his lawyer believes there are possible procedural grounds for a mistrial/retrial, and then execute him within three years.

In cases where the evidence is less clear -- which are the majority -- I'm in favor of the current slow system.

[Shardik]

23. Sounds as if he found his soul.

K&R

[asteroid2003QQ47]

25. The *DU Prison Builders* have gone AWOL? n/t