A New Museum Shows Death Penalty as a Way of Life

The sun was shining here in the nation’s death penalty capital when the mayor cut a ceremonial swath of red ribbon. The correctional officer choir sang “God Bless America,” and tourists sampled a cake decorated with a black ball and chain.

It was opening day at the Texas Prison Museum, 6,000 square feet of shackles, knives and guns culled from the town’s sprawling state prison complex, which houses the busiest execution chamber in the country.

“It’s really not macabre,” Huntsville Mayor William Green said. “It shows the history of an institution that has been part of this community for 150 years.”

Inside the red-brick walls designed to resemble a prison, young mothers peered at murder weapons and tattoo guns while bored toddlers in strollers sucked their thumbs. Wardens and prison guards glanced at the memorabilia with casual interest. For them, the jagged kitchen knife used to kill a guard in 1985 and prisoner-made garrotes hardly qualified as creepy artifacts. They were scenes from a normal workweek.

“Some people say, ‘How can you show this?’ But we don’t think it should be hidden,” said Mark Bull, a former lieutenant on death row who is now a museum board member. “We’re not here to blame or excuse or throw a poor light on Huntsville. We’re just here to show what is and what was. Let people make their own decisions.”

Last week’s opening marked the move from the 13-year-old gallery’s cramped quarters downtown to a cavernous exhibition hall on the edge of town. The nonprofit museum is supported by private donations, $4 admission fees and gift shop sales. (“I did hard time in Huntsville,” announces a $20 souvenir T-shirt.) Eighty miles north of Houston, the museum is expected to attract more than 50,000 visitors a year.

The exhibits chronicle inmate life, from crafts to gang warfare. One installation details famous breakouts at the prison complex and shows a startlingly realistic gun carved from wood and painted silver. A replica cell -- complete with bunk beds, a sink and a toilet -- gives visitors a sense of the quarters inmates share.

But the real draw is the capital punishment display. Death by lethal injection is graphically illustrated with three syringes used in the 1982 execution of Texas inmate Charlie Brooks Jr., the first to die by lethal injection after the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.

“This is gross. Why would anyone keep all this stuff?” asked Lian Martinez, 32, as she stared at an intravenous tube that snaked through the Brooks memorabilia.

“It’s kind of weird that anyone would make a museum like this,” said Martinez, who grew up in Huntsville, the daughter of a prison captain. But she understands the allure. “It’s kind of like driving by a car wreck. You can’t help but look.”

Did convicted murderer J.W. Morrow Jr. ever imagine that his elaborately detailed last-meal request would one day be on public display? “One small steak (tender, no bone, no fat, cooked rare-medium),” instructed Morrow in 1950. He also wanted French fries (large order), butter beans (small order) and brown grease gravy (medium order).

“This is my last meal, and ... I want it served hot on however many plates it takes to keep from mixing everything up together,” he wrote in a determined scrawl.

Morrow was 29 when he was strapped into “Old Sparky,” Texas’ famous electric chair also on display here, its burnished wood and thick leather straps gleaming like a piece of art under a row of track lighting. The chair was retired in 1964 after 361 executions, and when inmates helped set up the new museum, most were reluctant to handle it. “No one wanted to touch it,” Bull said.

Donna White, 36, a tourist from Ohio, shook her head as she looked at the forbidding chair and syringes. “It’s eerie,” she said. “But I think everybody needs to come here to see what capital punishment is really about.”

At the “prison contraband” corner, an 8-year-old boy tugged at his grandmother’s sleeve. “Ninny, what are those?” he asked, pointing to a row of sharp metal objects. “Those are shanks, honey,” she replied. “See how they hid them in their shoes so they could pop them out and stab someone?”

“And next to it, that’s a homemade nunchuk that prisoners aren’t supposed to have,” she added.

“You mean like the ninjas use?” he asked, quickly distracted. “Oh Ninny, can we go see ‘Old Sparky’ again?”

Texas has performed 29 executions this year; most were carried out without any public stir. Three are scheduled in Huntsville this week, and they too will probably cause barely a ripple here, Bull said.

“Most people don’t pay attention to it. It’s quiet and lovely here, and life goes on,” he said. “We don’t impose the death penalty. We simply carry out a court order.”

The town’s unapologetic support for its leading employer catches many visitors off guard, said Martinez, who works for the Chamber of Commerce. “People come here from Europe and are appalled. We just say, ‘Welcome to Huntsville.’ ”