Georgia Electric Chair Recordings Tell Different Stories

When it came time to say goodbye, the tapes were rolling.

“I love the Lord and I hope you all love him,” one inmate said as a black hood was slipped over his head. “Goodbye, Mother.”

“I’d like to thank the people at this institution for taking such good care of me,” another inmate said as straps were cinched down on his wrists.

Said a third: “I can only say I’m not sorry I’m leaving this world.”

Twenty-three men have been electrocuted in Georgia since 1983, and this week, the audiotapes of their last moments--and their last words--were broadcast on radio stations nationwide.

Listeners heard prison staffers meticulously go through a matter-of-fact checklist as they prepared to put the men to death.

“The perspiration has been wiped again from the condemned’s forehead and the hood is being placed on at this time,” one official said.

“On my count of three, begin the process,” another official said. “One. Two. Three. The execution is now in progress. He made one jerk when the voltage initially entered the body.”

The tapes, which span executions from 1983 to 1998, include no names, no shouts, no screams of pain. Just a string of quiet voices.

Death penalty supporters say the tapes prove that executions are professional and unemotional.

Opponents say that that’s precisely the problem.

“It’s spooky how routine it has become to put down a human being,” said Atlanta death penalty lawyer Stephen Bright. “I would hope that most people will find the clinical way this is being done as really chilling.”

It’s not clear what the effect will be of the death chamber tapes, broadcast Wednesday on WYNC, a New York public radio station, and repeated on other stations in the days since. But the airing comes at a time when the death penalty already is on many people’s minds--and increasingly under attack.

Timothy J. McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, is scheduled to be executed May 16 at a federal prison in Indiana. Gov. George Ryan of Illinois made big news last year when he declared a moratorium on executions. Breakthroughs in DNA evidence and new studies on the relationship between race and punishment have reinvigorated interest in the topic, although 67% of Americans still support capital punishment, according to a Gallup poll in April.

“It’s one of those issues that rises and falls, rises and falls,” said Daryl Robinson, deputy counsel to Georgia’s attorney general. “I don’t think these tapes will change anyone’s mind. They pretty well show state officials are doing their best to carry out a difficult job.”

Executions are usually shrouded in secrecy, often carried out late at night or in the gray hours of morning. Few people are allowed to attend. U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft sparked a controversy earlier this year when he decided to allow victims’ families in Oklahoma to watch McVeigh’s death via closed circuit television.

No other state, according to prison officials, has kept recordings, audio or otherwise, of people getting put to death. But ever since 1983, when Georgia returned to electrocutions after a 10-year hiatus, microphones have been as much a part of executions as final meals.

“We did it to safeguard ourselves,” said Mike Light, spokesman for the Georgia Department of Corrections. “We wanted to make sure there was proof we were following our policies.”

For the most part, the tapes reveal an antiseptic process, purposefully drained of any emotion and human feeling. There were two instances when that process went awry, however.

In 1984, the initial jolt of electricity failed to end the life of Alpha Otis Stephens, convicted of killing a man during a burglary.

“What is the status of the condemned?” asked one official (on all tapes, the man about to be executed is referred to as “the condemned”).

“Sir,” another official replied, his voice peaking nervously, “he appears to be breathing to me.”

“You gonna have to have them check the sponges. . . . There’s something they don’t have connected right.”

It wasn’t until 20 minutes later that Stephens was pronounced dead. In 1996, a similar problem delayed the death of Larry Lonchar, a multiple murderer.

Georgia is among the last states, along with Nebraska and Alabama, still electrocuting people. Most other states have switched to lethal injection.

“A lot of people assume executions run smoothly, but they don’t,” said Tonya McCary, program director for the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. “Hopefully, these tapes will wake people up.”

One woman and 127 men await execution in Georgia. Nationwide, there are about 3,700 inmates on death row. Since 1973, nearly 100 people sentenced to death have been found innocent and set free, said Bright, director of the Southern Center for Human Rights.

Victims’ rights groups tend to support the death penalty. However, many were upset when the tapes aired.

“It makes you sympathize with criminals and forget about victims,” said Dianne Clements, president of Houston-based Justice for All. “Human beings tend to root for the underdog. And who’s more of an underdog than someone strapped into a chair about to die?”

Georgia, by the way, won’t be taping any more deaths.

Said prison spokesman Mike Light: “We don’t feel it’s necessary anymore.”

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Times researcher Edith Stanley contributed to this report.