18 Minutes on a Warm Bay Night

It was 12:05 a.m. Tuesday. Execution witnesses would report later that this was the exact minute David Mason entered the gas chamber. At the prison gate, however, there was no way to know what was happening inside. All anyone could do was stare at lighted windows, and imagine.

Most of the crowd of 200 gathered outside to protest the execution of Mason, a killer of five who had fought in court for a speedy delivery of his sentence. In both appearance and rhetoric, many seemed like relics of the ‘60s, gentle souls who called themselves, in somewhat important tones, “abolitionists,” and bore placards quoting Nietzsche. Now, they grew quiet. Their candles flickered in a soft summer breeze blowing off the bay. A few wept. Not all.

“Drop the pellet!” a young man yelled, splitting the reverential hush. “Let him smell it!”

He wore a Giants cap and waved a flashing red light. He stood toward the middle of the shoulder-to-shoulder throng, which was awash in light from television cameras and prison towers. Several young rowdies stood with him, one of them defiantly holding aloft a sign that said: “Just do it.”

The protesters weren’t sure how to respond. “Let’s sing,” a young woman suggested. “We shall overcome,” she warbled, but no one took up the song. Instead, a shouting match broke out. It was 12:08 a.m. and the gas chamber had just been sealed.

“Take a seat, Dave,” the man in the Giants cap shouted. “The man has accepted responsibility for his actions.”

“You are going to be cheated,” an abolitionist taunted. “He’s going to change his mind.”

“Those people he killed didn’t get to change their minds, did they?”

“The death penalty is wrrooonnnggg,” a woman wailed.

“So is murder.”

They were rolling now. This is how it had gone for much of the night. This is how it always goes anymore when the subject is capital punishment--bumper sticker rhetoric from both sides. There is nothing new to say. The same arguments against the death penalty have been made for centuries. Who can say why California is one of the few places in the world where the arguments don’t work. It was 12:11 a.m., and inside the prison the cyanide pellets had been dropped.

“Two wrongs don’t make a right,” an abolitionist shouted.

“Don’t kill if you don’t want to be killed,” Giants cap shouted back.

“Provocateur,” a woman hissed.

“Femi-Nazi,” he hissed back.

“Why don’t you say something intelligent?”

“Don’t tell me what to do. I’m here to celebrate. I wish I had brought champagne for everybody.”

He had, in fact, brought a thermos for himself, and the long pulls he took suggested it might contain something stronger than Maxwell House. It was 12:15 a.m. The witnesses later would describe how, at this minute, Mason had gasped several times, spittle gushing from his mouth. Outside, the crowd assumed the execution was under way as scheduled.

“Shame, shame, shame,” the protesters chanted. “Shame, shame, shame.”

“Kill him, kill him, kill him,” the rowdies responded.

“Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame.”

“Justice. Justice. Justice. Justice.”

Signs bobbed above heads, like placards at a political rally. “Two Down, 368 to Go,” said one. “Do You Feel Any Safer Now?” countered another. From a transistor radio came the promise of an update. Turn it up, someone commanded. Everyone strained to hear. The execution, the announcer reported, was “going forward.”

“I smell gaaa-assss,” one of the rowdies jeered.

“Can I ask what you are feeling,” a young reporter asked a silver-haired woman at the front of the crowd.

“I feel sad,” the woman said.

“Expect patchy low clouds,” the radio was now reporting, the announcer’s voice considerably lightened. “With clear sunny skies taking over by the afternoon.”

At 12:23 a.m., it was official: Mason was dead. The radio said so.

“Justice has been served,” Giants cap yelled.

“And so will you when you get back to the bar,” a protester muttered, eliciting giggles.

Two protesters who had met at the gate said their goodbys.

“We should get together at some better time” one said.

“Anything would be better than this,” the other responded, adding gravely: “Except nuclear war.”

They sighed together. The crowd broke up quickly, quietly. It would be a long walk back to the cars. “This adventure,” as one of the protest leaders had called it, was complete. Everything had been said. Nothing had been changed. California had one less murderer, but daylight was still hours away.