Posted on 08/18/2002 2:48:06 PM PDT by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
CARSON CITY -- The Nevada State Prison's death chamber, where 20 condemned men have entered through a submarine-type door to die, may never be used again for executions.
Warden Mike Budge says the half-century-old chamber is in a cramped corner of the prison that's "almost medieval." Besides, he says recent federal court rulings have raised uncertainty over the future of capital punishment.
The 9-by-12-foot death chamber was last used in April 2001, when a screaming, sobbing Sebastian Bridges, 37, was executed by lethal injection for shooting another man and letting him bleed to death in the desert outside Las Vegas.
"That might be the last one," Budge said, standing next to the death chamber's oval steel door. "We need something that's more clinical, and look at the overall picture because of the court decisions."
Besides the death chamber, with its beige-painted walls, two bare light bulbs and a ventilation pump on the ceiling, there's a 13-by-20-foot viewing room and a closet-sized "executioners' room." From there, two prison employees, peering through a cracked, one-way mirror into the death room, pump a cocktail of lethal drugs into condemned inmates' veins.
The entire area, which also includes two "last night" cells, is so small that "it's difficult for people to move around," Associate Warden Glen Whorton said.
"Executions are a difficult activity to begin with," he said. "And with the added difficulty of the confined space, it's something we want to get away from."
The prison system is preparing a request to turn a first-floor storage area into a new execution room, replacing the second-floor chamber that was put into service in 1950.
Whorton said the cost hasn't been determined, but likely would be minimal.
A final decision by state lawmakers can't be made until next year, when the Legislature convenes again in regular session.
One of the 84 convicts, 83 men and one woman, now on death row could be executed before that. But the condemned man who's next in line to die is Thomas Nevius and his case may be affected by a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling against executions of mentally retarded people.
Lawyers for Nevius, convicted in a 1980 burglary and murder in Las Vegas, say he has the mental level of a 7-year-old. An independent evaluation suggests he suffers from mild mental retardation.
If the death chamber is replaced, it won't be the first time. Two and possibly three other locations at Nevada State Prison were used previously for executions by lethal gas or injection.
From the 1860s until 1912, 10 condemned prisoners were hanged at the prison. And in 1913, America Mircovich was executed by three rifles, mounted on an iron frame, that fired automatically.
After that, there were no executions until February 1924, when Nevada pioneered the use of cyanide gas with the execution of Gee Jon, who had killed a man in Mineral County. Temporary arrangements were made for Jon's execution and also for Jukich Stanko's death by lethal gas a year later. Stanko's crime was killing a woman in White Pine County.
A building designed for executions was built, using inmate labor, in 1929 and was used 18 times. Eugene Gambetta was the last to die there, in 1949, after he killed his ex-wife in Reno.
The current death chamber was used 20 times, first in 1950 when James Williams was executed for killing a co-worker in Elko. The last execution by lethal gas was in 1979. Jesse Bishop, who killed a man in an attempted Las Vegas casino robbery, deliberately took deep breaths to speed up the process. Since then, all executions have been by lethal injection.
Bishop and seven other condemned men who followed him were "table jumpers," guard parlance for inmates who put up no resistance as they were led to the death chamber and strapped into a chair or onto the gurney that's now used.
Bridges' execution was the most bizarre in recent years. Wearing his brown, double-breasted Pierre Cardin suit and shiny, new black shoes, he appeared calm at first, but then broke down, sobbing and yelling, "You want to kill me like a dog."
Bridges screamed that prison officials should halt the execution, but finally said, "I will not stop it."
Had he said he wanted to appeal, even at the last minute, the execution would have been called off.
Another appeal from the pro-hemp lobby?
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