The Battalion, Texas A & M University

TEXAS: Former chaplain shares death row experiences

The death penalty is akin to legalized murder, said Rev. Carroll Pickett, chaplain at the Texas Prison System's death row in Huntsville for 20 years, during a talk at Texas A&M Friday.

 Pickett spoke to a crowd of about 75 people, saying the death penalty degrades society and caters to the lowest human impulse.

 "How can Texas kill people to tell people that killing people is wrong?" he asked.

 Pickett said there is no equity in the system. If someone has money, education, and is the right race, they will not be put to death, he said.

 "All the convicts who were my clerks had killed their wives," he said. "But they had enough money to get a good lawyer, and did not get sentenced to death."

 Pickett was present at the death of 95 inmates. At least the last 15 he saw die at the hands of the legal justice system were black, he said.

 "It was my job to talk to them and to bring them over to the room where they would die," he said. "I never had a single one fight."

 He described the process in detail to the crowd, who sat in complete silence during the description. Pickett said the warden's signal to give the injection was removing his glasses.

 "Some of them were young kids," Pickett said. "It's difficult to watch a strong, healthy man die in less than 7 minutes."

 The victim's families have his sympathy, he said. But he said the death penalty only creates a new set of victims.

 When two of Pickett's parishoners were killed by 3 convicts during a hostage situation at the Hunstville prison in 1974, he was angry for a long time, Pickett said.

 But after counseling the last convict to die at the time of his execution many years later, and talking to the man's son about removal of the body, Pickett's perspective changed. Both the convict's family and the victims' families told him they had no closure when the convict died.

Pickett said when he questioned prisoners about motives, they claimed they were not deterred by the death penalty because they never planned on getting caught.

"Of all the punishments they said they'd hate life in prison the most," he said. "Life in prison is horrible."

 Pickett described witnessing a 73-year old man leap to his death a day before he was to be paroled.

 "Nobody bothered to tell him," he said.

 Pickett also said that he once had 3 inmates committ suicide in one night.

 Audience members Judi and Vince Sweat said they recently changed their opinion on the death penalty after seeing Sister Helen Prejean, the author of Dead Man Walking, speak in Kansas advocating a moratorium on the death penalty.

 "I think more people would oppose the death penalty if we could be assured a life sentence really meant life without parole," Vince Sweat said.

 Sophomore general studies major Nazer Taqui said that Pickett's speech was moving, and made him look at both points of view: the victim's family and the murderer's family. Taqui, a practicing Muslim, asked Pickett what the Christian viewpoint on the death penalty was and why so much attention had recently been focused on potential change.

 Pickett said the Old Testament teaches "eye for an eye" but that most Christians today follow the New Testament: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," a more forgiving message of love, he said.

 Pickett's talk was sponsored by the Memorial Student Center (MSC) Current Issues Awareness (CIA) committee and the Catholic Student Association (CSA).

 4 executions are scheduled for this month. A Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (TCADP) member who declined to be identified said that the group will protest Nov. 6, 19, 20, and 21 at the corner Texas Avenue and New Main Drive at 6pm, the same time as each scheduled execution in Huntsville.