34 Minutes

July 30, 2009

The first thing you notice in Florida’s death chamber is that the room is divided into halves. On one side, 30 some-odd chairs sit facing a wall length plexiglass pane.

Beyond the glass, behind a brown curtain, there is a gurney and white sheets and a telephone for the warden and a wall behind which the executioner waits to deliver a lethal dose of potassium chloride.

Right off the bat, it’s important to ensure that you are on the right side of the glass.

There is nothing to be had in the death room itself.

The second thing you will notice is that there is no talking in the witness room.

No one whispers or sighs.

There are no cell phones or blackberries.

In fact, the denim colored carpet seems to devour even the sound of shuffling feet. The only noises are the hum of an old air conditioner struggling with the humidity and the ticking of wristwatches, because nowhere is time more important that in an execution chamber.

From the moment the curtain is pulled, the second hand marks each breath until you find yourself leaning over, your nose closer to the glass to try to catch the exact second the condemned stops breathing.

Journalists in the room mark every minute because today’s executions are decidedly anti-climactic.

There are no traumatic shots from firing squads or charges of electricity coursing through twitching legs or banging trapdoors and snapped necks or even noxious clouds of deadly gas.

Heads do not roll.

Cigarettes do not drop from colorless lips.

It is a muted death we share in the execution room, like slipping below a still water without even a splash.

The eyes flutter and close, the jaw slacks and all of a sudden the person who was alive a moment ago is dead.

We are conditioned for a certain chronology. Things must have a beginning, a middle and an end, but in the death room there are no cues. If it weren’t for the familiar click-clack of two dozen tiny hands made in Switzerland or Japan or China or some other far-off land, the execution would last forever, locked in a purgatory of waiting and watching, or of lying on a gurny with beads of sweat on your forehead, trying to make eye contact with the guard standing over you holding a leather strap tight across your brow.

But it has to end, and sooner or later the warden comes over the loudspeaker to say the will of the state of Florida has been carried out and his voice drowns out the passing of time.

Sometimes the process takes a few minutes. Once it took 34, but the result is always the same, because no precision of chronometry can catch the exact moment of a life expiring. There are no flashes or bangs and you’re left feeling sort of empty, like you’ve chased something that only just escaped and left you holding it’s shadow.

Then its over and you’re back in real time again and you can tell that it’s late and that you have a long drive home and outside the sun is setting and it’s starting to rain.

Dana Speer

August 21

As you say, "no precision of chronometry can catch the exact moment of a life expiring." But your words capture poetically its sadness as well as time's arbitrary meaninglessness. Thank you for sharing this. I felt it physically.

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