"Maybe death is heaven?"

Nowhere in the U.S. the death penalty is carried out more often - a visit with john Alba who faces lethal injection in Hunstville/Texas

From a shabby Hamburger bar on 11th street you have the best view of the main entrance, and you get an extra drink if you order has not been accepted within three minutes - American service. Still it seems to be a place where nobody would like to stay if he didn't have to - except if coming from the countryside and having to kill time until "the date" at 6 p.m.

They are easy to identify by their eyes filled with tears and the way they are sticking together - all silent and desperate and anxiously glancing at the clock on the gable. In this goddam place the inmate's families meet while waiting for the lethal injection being carried out behind the walls of "The Walls". Shortly before 6p.m. they cross the street to get to the witnessing-room, which they will be leaving again after less than 20 minutes. Through a side entrance the victim's family will be leaving as well - according to the American notion of guilt and atonement, they are also entitled to separately watch the killing.

Only once, when Carla Faye Tucker was executed in the Huntsville prison a couple of weeks ago - which the world took notice of with disgust - the barely exciting little town between Dallas and Houston got into the headlines of the media (official advertisement: "?where adventure begins?"). Huntsville lives on crime. The number of 35000 inhabitants includes 10000 inmates as well as 7000 employees of the prison system. Texas claims to have established the biggest prison system in the world. Taxpayers are proudly informed that there is no air-conditioning in the cells, no TV, and that the inmates do not get a single penny for the work they do. Huntsville has been called a "city of death", because there is no other place in the U.S. where the state would have made use of its right to kill as often as it did in Texas. 37 people were executed last year, more than in all other parts of the U.S. and there have been nine executions so far this year. Till the middle of May 13 executions had been scheduled - a schedule of death.

One day John Avalos Alba may be strapped to the gurney and make his final statement through the microphone. The Hispanic auto mechanic has been on death row for six years, being locked up in Ellis 1 unit, a high security prison in the country around Huntsville, only a few miles from town. He was sentenced to death for shooting his wife Wendy during an altercation after she had been having several love affairs with other guys. Witnesses of the defence who would have been able to confirm this fact were excluded from the stand. His new attorney, Anthony Haughton from Houston, is trying to prove that Alba did not intentionally commit the crime. It is not sure thought whether he will be able to succeed in getting the death sentence commuted by making the painful way through the various stages of appeal.

"In this country there is a subtle kind of racism, but in this case it is so obvious you can catch it", Haughton says. Everybody involved in the trial was white - the prosecutor, the judge, the experts, the attorneys who were inexperienced and poorly paid, and the jurors.

Here are two glimpses of the 1992 trial, which reveal the effect the colour of John Alba's skin did have on the sentencing.

The DA, Goeller: "It is not unfair to mention that the defendant by his appearance and name is not Caucasian. He is not black or Chinese either. Let us call him Hispanic. He looks like a Hispanic, whatever this means? He is not white, and he is not black, he is not green or yellow, and he is not oriental. So he must be Hispanic I guess."

NO CHANCE FROM THE BEGINNING

From the cross-examination of Dr. Quijano by the DA: "I would like to aim at the question of the accused being likely to commit more crimes in the future. According to researches being quoted in your book there is a certain correlation with race. Is this correct?" Expert: "Yes." DA: "Hispanics have a higher recidivism rate than blacks or whites?" Expert: "Yes, that's true."

John's brother Rudy and George, with a sense of justice simple people have, are saying that he did not stand a chance from the very beginning. "Well, he is not an angel, but he is not a murderer. John shot her because he knew the truth about Wendy's affairs, and he was upset. But nobody talked about her faults during the trial."

We are sitting on the porch of Rudy's small house in Elgin, a place with 5000 inhabitants, where John grew up. The sleepy nest with a post office and a general store looks like an old western town. "We were very poor", Rudy says. "After our father dies, John had to quit school at 15 years of age and repair cars."

For days before he shot his wife, John had been highly intoxicates, Anthony, the lawyer, found out. Police videos of his arrest are showing a desperate man, pointing a gun to his head. Rudy silently looks at a shed, where he keeps his gun. Over here almost everybody has got a gun, which is quite common in Texas.

In the evening John's older brother Luis drops in. He works as a constable with the Texas police. "None of us knows how we would react under certain conditions", Luis says. They are unlike brothers - the policeman and the death row inmate. Johnny, how everybody calls him, feels laden with guilt which he carried like a heavy burden, and he cannot cope with the thought of having taken away the mother from his sons Robert and Eric (age 13 and 17). He has never heard from them again.

Ellis Unit. The guards on the watchtower have the permission to shoot at escapees without any warning. A few inmates from population are playing something like baseball, with their bare hands, clubs are not allowed for safety reasons. Squash has been invented in prison too, hasn't it? In the background some inmates are cutting the grass. Guards on horseback, having shouldered their guns, keep them in check.

Security check. They confiscate an open package of headache tablets. In some U.S. prisons, visitors, before entering, have to sign a paper saying that in case of a kidnapping they will not do much to save them. In Ellis 1 unit, the high security bunker, you do not have to sign anything - the mere thought of a possible revolt would probably seem absurd.

The visiting-room is a long dark tube with about 20 cabins and heavy wooden chairs. It is divided by a thick bulletproof pane, which only within a small area, on a level with your chest and eyes, allows to look at each other. Vending machines offer popcorn, chips, salted peanuts, and if the guards are willing, they hand in a bag to the inmates. There are a lot of fingerprints to be seen on the pane. The only possibility to get a feeling of closeness in this place giving hardly any room for human touch is to press both hand from both sides to the glass. To the men it seems like a caress.

A stout guard, a club in his belt, is bringing in John Alba, his hands on the back, handcuffed, and taking him to his cage where the handcuffs are opened. Death row inmates in lock-down always have to stay in a cage while visiting.

We say "hi" like everybody does, hands to the glass. You have to stretch and almost shout to drown the noise. A siren is to be heard - just the counting of the inmates says the man behind the glass, smiling. Before he came here, he believed - like many others in the world do - that death row inmates practically were nothing but monsters. After six years he knows that most of them are just normal guys, waiting for paper or bump against the bars, a couple of envelopes or a cup of coffee from your cellmate means a little bit of human touch which helps you survive. John's lawyer sometimes calls Ellis hell. "Yes", John says in a low voice, "it is hell. Maybe death is heaven? For them we are nothing but waste."

There are 450 men on death row in Ellis 1, being clearly separated from the other 2500 inmates and having hardly any contact with each other. They are kept like beasts in dark cage-like cells. Those who said to be particularly dangerous are kept in complete isolation, seeing no daylight at all. Some have lived there for more than 15 or 20 years, until one day time will come.

For many a hot night on his bunk, thoughts about what he did and about his death have been haunting him. Sometimes there are rats whisking around. The other day he tried to catch one with his fan. John knows the supporters of the death penalty pretend lethal injection to be a humane procedure. He knows about it from films he saw. "But nobody has ever come back from the execution chamber saying it didn't hurt. " John is smiling sadly for his dark humour, which he managed to maintain even on death row. The guard is coming two minutes too early to take him back to his cell.

The execution chamber, painted light blue, is located in a simple one-storied building within the man prison in town. Everything seems so very clean and sterile, and by its cold perfection the execution machinery makes you feel even worse. You smell the disinfectant and you see heaps of cotton wool. The cover of the gurney is snow-white. There are no folds. Recently, the local newspaper, "The Huntsville Item", in a cartoon dared to replace lethal injection by guillotine.

The assistant director of the prison, Joe S. Fernald, a broad-shouldered man in his late fifties, with a hat covering his forehead, is a protector of law and order. "We carry out the will of the people, and that's what over here is called democracy." It is Fernald who, at his desk, gives the starting shot. No, says the man whose children were born in Germany, all of a sudden, he wouldn't feel like "little Eichmann". It's just his job, "but I don't get any satisfaction from watching a murderer being killed."

Emotionless, he technically describes the execution procedure, like the directions for use of a washing machine. Not even those five officers who strap the inmate to the gurney know who the executioners are, who is adjusted the injections and, later on, pushes the button for the ampoules to be emptied. The medication team - which is how Fernald calls the executioners in white (including Vietnam veterans with medical know-how) - enters the control room from the outside. It is from here that the poison is flowing through a gap in the wall. Behind opaque glass, a doctor is supervising the heart functions on a monitor.

For the last meters, his "last walk", the inmate will do without the handcuffs. "A matter of decency", says the one executing the will of the people, and he does not even seem to be aware of the irony in his words.

Three deadly substances are injected into the veins. First there in Sodium Thiopental, a strong narcotic, second Pancuroniumbromide, which is to stop the breathing of the lungs, and finally Potassiumchloride which in the shortest possible time makes the heart stand still.

After the last heavy breathing will have been heard through the loudspeaker, a voice from the off will command "lights out". The gurney then will be a bier with the corpse of a man being put to death like an old dog.

Harald Biskup (translated by Petra Servugian)

Kolner Stadttanzeiger - April 9th 1998