Today’s State-Assisted Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
There are two methods by which death row inmates attempt to shorten their prison time. The prisoner can scrounge up a handmade weapon and try to kill himself – thereby robbing the state of the satisfaction of carrying out the chosen penalty. Or, they can abandon all legal appeals of the death sentence and hasten their execution. Both methods are frowned upon by state authorities and great effort is made to thwart such independent decisions by a condemned prisoner.
For the many “Volunteers,” prison system slang for the condemned men and women who choose to accept their death sentence without a fight, a cell on Death Row has proven to be the one thing that can prolong their life. A signed death warrant becomes a virtual life jacket for the prisoner until the court-appointed date of demise, and state officials show little patience for those who try to alter the scheduled day or method of their execution. At least three condemned men (David Lee Herman, Robert Breechen, and infamous media celebrity Gary Gilmore) have attempted suicide only to be wrestled from the jaws of death and executed shortly thereafter by finicky state officials who will apparently do anything to stick to their prearranged timetables.
Thus execution volunteerism has become a Catch-22 for many Death Row residents. Although it seems to defy logic, when a prisoner willfully abandons the appeal process and accepts the death penalty as fitting punishment for his crime, the execution is suddenly ruled a “state-assisted suicide” and judges, lawyers and protesters alike all clamor to keep the condemned person alive – much to the chagrin of the prisoner himself! Gary Gilmore angrily fired his own attorneys after they won him a stay of execution against his wishes, and more recently Ohio’s Wilford Lee Berry threatened to slit his own mother’s throat when her appeals succeeded in postponing his eagerly awaited execution. On a slightly larger scale, convicted murderer Daniel Colwell threatened to kill or torture the jurors and their families during his trial, while Gerald Smith raised the level of threats up a notch by adding the judge and prosecutor to the list of people he intended to pump off if he wasn’t given the death sentence he was hoping for during his day in court.
Daniel Colwell’s attorney has been quoted as saying that giving a suicidal man what he wants by executing him sets “a dangerous public policy,” but Colwell himself examined a different type of danger during his statement to the jury. “As long as I am alive, I might kill again,” he stated matter-of-factly. “Jurors, why take the risk?”
Daniel Colwell addressing the jury.
Culled from: Last Suppers: Famous Final Meals from Death Row
The Youngest Victims
Murder Has a Public Face by Larry Millett is a collection of crime and punishment photos in the Speed Graphic camera era taken in the St. Paul, Minnesota area. Here’s a sad excerpt:
It’s the night of December 6, 1964, in St. Paul, and a deputy coroner and a police patrolman have the mournful task of carrying children’s bodies from the East Side home of Gerald and Susan Neubauer. A third child’s body and that of Susan Neubauer, 29, would soon be taken to the morgue as well. Suffering from some darkness of the soul no one recognized or understood, Neubauer strangled the children – boys aged seven and four and a two-year-old girl – as they lay in their beds. Afterward, she walked down to the basement and hanged herself from a gas pipe. She left a grieving husband but no note.
Pioneer Press, Don Church, Dec. 7, 1964.
A third method is to commit another murder while on death row, or while otherwise in prison.
In the good old days when Great Britain famously had 220 capital crimes, one of them was–you guessed it–attempted suicide.
HAVE NOT RECEIVED AN EMAIL IN SOMETIME. ARE YOU ILL. HOPE NOT.
I sent out an explanation with today’s fact. The Camp Fire hit me personally and I’ve been away salvaging my parents home in Paradise.