Among the Lowest of the Dead: The Culture of Capital Punishment

II. Dancing on the Head of a Pin

PART II DANCING ON THE HEAD OF A PIN The breakfast carts rattle through the concrete prison at about half past five, and as they approach death row the first sounds of morning repeat the last sounds of night-remote -controlled locks clanking open and clunking closed, electric gates whirring, heavy metal doors crashing shut, voices wailing, Klaxons blaring. A maximum-security prison has no soft sounds. At the end of each corridor of death-house cells, a guard opens a heavy door of steel bars, and a prison trusty pushes a breakfast cart inside. The door closes behind him, and when it locks, a second door opens and the trusty is on the tier. He steers his cart along the corridor, stopping at each cell to pass a tray ofpowdered eggs and lukewarm grits through a small slot in the bars. Inside the cell, on a thin mattress perhaps thirty inches wide, an inmate wakes, blinks his eyes. He is, perhaps, confused for a moment: Is he facing the dull concrete wall to his right, or the identical dull wall a single body length away to his left, or the identical dull ceiling ofhis featureless box? In any case, he orients himself in a moment, then stands, takes one step to the bars, and hauls in his tray. He sits on the bunk and eats with his tray on his knees. When he is finished, he returns the tray to the slot and, typically, goes back to sleep. Sleep-"downy sleep, Death's counterfeit," as Shakespeare put it-is the best way to pass time on death row. Toward nine o'clock, the day resumes as the men of death row come reluctantly awake again. Perhaps a man now runs his eyes around the place he calls his "house." There are three concrete walls to it, a concrete floor, and a concrete ceiling. The fourth wall is made of bars, which open onto the corridor, which is about eight feet wide. On the other side of the corridor, beyond another grille of steel, are grimy little windows, and beyond the windows are empty prison grounds bounded by coils of razor wire. From side to side, his house is about two paces wide; from back to front, about three paces deep. It is one .'. 121 .'. AMONG THE LOWEST OF THE DEAD pace from the steel bunk to the steel sink-and-toilet combination. The toilet has no seat, just a molded rim of steel. Concrete and steel, steel and concrete. Under the bunk or next to it is a small steel locker for the prisoner 's belongings. Tightly fIxed to one wall is a small bar for hanging a towel. High up the rear of the cell is a ventilation grate about a foot square, and from this grate the prisoner has probably run a clothesline to the bars at the front of the cell. Dangling from the line are his damp white socks, white boxer shorts, blue dungarees, and orange T-shirtsthe men of death row wear orange to distinguish them from the rest of the prison population. The prisoner does his laundry in the sink or in the toilet and hangs it overhead to dry. Laundry is a good way to pass time. Once a man learns the slowest, most meticulous way of washing socks, he can stretch that task out over several hours. The man's walls may be bare, or decorated with his own artwork, or with pictures offamily, or pictures offar-off places, pictures ofJesus, or of Muhammad, or of nude women, or of nude men. A condemned prisoner can survey his whole house with one quick sweep of his eyes: It is essentially a bathroom with a bunk where the tub would ordinarily be. He spends an average of twenty-three hours a day inside, knows every hairline crack and rusty paint chip. If this is a winter morning, it is very cold on death row; if this is summer, it is very hot. It stinks the same regardless of the season, the air thick with the odor of smoking, sweating, dirty, defecating men. Morning is typically the time for calisthenics, if a man still cares about keeping fit. He lies down on the floor between his bunk and the wall and does sit-ups, then flips over for push-ups, then stands for some knee bends or a little shadowboxing. Perhaps...