Today’s Bungled Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Mississippi’s first execution by cyanide gas asphyxiation was of Gerald Gallego, a Biloxi man who had slit the throat of one of his jailers during an escape attempt from the Pascagoula County jail, carried out in March 1955. Executioner Thomas Bruce prepared the chemicals, traveling executioner C. W. Watson dropped the lever to begin the execution… and nothing happened. The lever lowering the cyanide crystals into the sulfuric acid bath hadn’t dropped, and Gallego had to sit it out in the chamber while Bruce went in and fixed it. Watson dropped the lever again, and this time the crystals submerged easily beneath the chair with a quiet wisp. A bit too quiet: only a handful had made it into the acid bath, and the gas that came up was sufficient only to sicken Gallego. He was conscious as Watson decided to evacuate the chamber and start over; it took another twenty minutes to detoxicate the gas, get the chamber unbolted, put another pound of cyanide below the chair, close the chamber up, and start again. A full half hour passed before the attending doctor could declare death.
Culled from: The Last Face You’ll Ever See: The Culture of Death Row
With my luck, this would be my execution…
Knowing this guy had killed a guard would definitely make me uneasy going into the chamber with him. Sure, he’s strapped down, but meanness and desperation can make a person super strong.
Side note: This Gerald Gallego was the father of Gerald Gallego, who along with his girlfriend Charlene Williams, killed around ten young girls and women and one man in the late seventies/early eighties. Gerald Jr. was on death row, I believe, for twenty odd years before dying of cancer.
Apples and trees…