Times Commentary

Inside the Madness:
San Quentin's Death Chamber

SAN QUENTIN -- The death chamber at San Quentin State Prison was crowded. There were only about 20 visitors here on a recent weekday tour of the premises -- during executions up to 180 witnesses peer into the mint-green, bolt-ridden steel and glass chamber -- yet it was still hard to breathe.

"With lethal injection…it takes nine to 12 minutes to die," said Public Information Officer Vernell Crittendon, recounting his experiences of witnessing 10 executions here

As Crittendon related his carefully crafted recollections, replete with minute details of the crimes inflicted by the condemned inmates, it became clear that there were two groups of death-inflicting "madmen" in the picture: The ones condemned to die, and the ones operating a system of justice that inflicts such atrocity.

Here are the facts.

Execution doesn't help victims' families: Crittendon, who often gets to know victims' families well throughout the execution process, says he doesn't believe the death provides any closure.

It doesn't prevent violent crime: A national survey of police chiefs conducted by Peter D. Hart Research Associates in 1995 found that the death penalty ranked last as a way of reducing violent crime and was considered the least cost-effective method for controlling crime. Police chiefs also said capital punishment does not reduce the number of homicides -- murderers, they believe, do not think about the range of possible punishments. Just half the respondents supported capital punishment when given the option of life with possibility of parole.

And it doesn't come cheap: In Texas, where 29 people have been executed since January 2002, taxpayers end up shelling out more than $2 million per person, according to former Texas Attorney General Jim Mattox, quoted in the police chief survey. The survey's authors pointed out that 48 police officer earning an average starting salary of $42,000 a year could be added to the force -- a far better crime prevention move than killing one murderer.

Many Americans seem to agree. An October, 2002 Gallup poll found that public support for the death penalty stands at 70 percent -- down 10 percent from a year ago. A Gallup Poll taken in May, 2002 found that only 53 percent of Americans polled believe the death penalty is applied fairly. And in the same month, an ABCNews.com poll found that just 46 percent of Americans supported the death penalty when given the option of life without the possibility of parole.

What has been left out of the death penalty debate altogether -- and what was so readily apparent to many visitors at San Quentin -- is its effect on prison workers. While just 806 men and women have been executed in this country since 1976, the lives of thousands of workers have been forever altered.

Officer John Gladson, whose cheery demeanor matches his name, has witnessed numerous assaults among inmates and has been on the receiving end as well.

"I've been stabbed twice, hit with a brick, scalded, burned, hit with a pipe," he said. But he's fortunate -- plaques commemorating ten or so of his murdered colleagues line a circular brick walkway just inside the prison courtyard.

Finding fulfillment in his personal life, however, seems an ongoing struggle. The 20-year veteran works 60-hour weeks and goes home to a trailer on the prison parking lot.

"I've been married twice," he said, "and I blame it on prison. The first thing you lose is your trust."

Standing outside the door to a death row block, Gladson paused when asked how well he knew the roughly 600 condemned men at San Quentin.

"I knew Robert Harris -- Harry -- very well," he said of a death row inmate executed in 1992, the first execution in California in 25 years. "After that, I didn't really want to get to know someone else really well."

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan is hopeful that capital punishment will someday cease to be an option in any country on earth.

"The forfeiture of life is too absolute, too irreversible, for one human being to inflict it on another, even when backed by legal process," said Annan when presented with 3.2 million signatures of people opposed to the death penalty at the United Nations in Dec. 2000.

"And I believe that future generations, throughout the world, will come to agree."