“Tacos,” he says, beaming.
We are led into the official witness room at 11:45. It’s a room no larger than a living room, entirely lacking decor, gray walls and two rows of seats, the second row raised a single step up. No one really knows where to sit, but people seem to be in a hurry to take the back row, as if that provides them with distance from the spectacle. I figure I’ll let the victims’ families make the decision, so I end up sitting front and center, next to Joel on one side and Carolyn Pendry, a television reporter from Newscenter 4, on the other. Looking forward from my seat, there is a floor-to-ceiling window into the neighboring room, currently covered by a pale green curtain.
I can’t shake the analogy, it’s like going to the movies, settling in and waiting for the curtain to part. There is a table with pitchers of water and coffee-as if anyone needs caffeine right now-but otherwise no refreshments. Joel Lightner asked me yesterday if he should bring popcorn.
“What’re you doing after?” Carolyn Pendry, the reporter, whispers, with a tremble in her voice. She’s one of the city’s many reporter babes, tall and blond, high cheekbones. She’s completely made up, like the other reporters who will be going on camera later. She’s making a joke, an attempt to seem cool. Joel and I are going to get a steak afterward, actually, but I’m not going to share that with her.
Carolyn leans into me. “What did he say to you yesterday?”
“No comment” The fine reporter she is, Carolyn learned that Terry Burgos requested that I visit him yesterday. In the last three days before an execution in this state, an inmate is placed in an area known as “Deathwatch,” a group of four cells in the building adjacent to the execution chamber, where he is under twenty-four-hour observation by a team of correctional officers who work twelve-hour shifts. Condemned inmates are allowed two visitors a day over each of the three days. I was the only person to visit. It lasted all of five minutes.
The next several minutes are weird. The Department of Corrections sets a rigorous protocol for executions-from the timing of the final consultations with clergy to the last meal to the “death march” from Deathwatch to Building J to the official phone call to the commissioner, seeing if there are any last-minute stays-but there are no regulations that explain how to watch a man die. People are antsy in their seats. The reporters especially-the ones who are here for their job-are not enjoying themselves. It’s guaranteed airtime for them, maybe a special afterward about the crimes or the death penalty, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to enjoy this.
At about ten to twelve, the curtain on the window parts, pulled manually by prison guards. Carolyn, next to me, jerks. Various noises from the witnesses, gasps and moans and even a sob. The people in the back row are looking at the man who killed their daughters.
It’s a large space, with a small circular room within a room, a pale green-painted octagonal metal box, about six feet wide and eight feet high. The entrance is through a rubber-sealed steel door that has been closed by a large locking wheel. There are windows on all seven other sides, so that each of us in the viewing room can see the condemned prisoner.
Terry Burgos is in white boxers only, sitting in a metal chair, with leather straps across his upper and lower legs, arms, thighs, chest, and forehead. A long Bowles stethoscope is affixed to his hairy chest and leads outside the gas chamber, where a doctor will be able to pronounce Burgos dead without having to enter the chamber.
The forehead restraint is a new thing, after a guy down south split his head open banging it against the steel pole behind the chair while he fought the air hunger. Leave it to our state to want to stop a man from knocking himself unconscious so we can execute him.
If Terry Burgos looks pathetic, a hairy, pudgy man sitting in his underwear, strapped into a chair, with an audience watching the spectacle, he doesn’t reveal any awareness of it whatsoever. He doesn’t show much of anything, moving his eyes from person to person with the wonderment of a child. He has lived almost entirely in isolation for the last seven years, and maybe there is something stimulating about this.
Beneath Burgos’s chair is a bowl filled with sulfuric acid mixed with distilled water. Suspended above the bowl, in a gauze bag, is a pound of sodium cyanide pellets. When the warden gives the signal, the guard outside the gas chamber will pull a lever that will release the cyanide into the liquid, causing a chemical reaction that releases hydrogen cyanide.
Actually, there are three levers that will be pulled simultaneously by three different guards. Two of the levers will not do a damn thing, while the third will lower the pellets into the acidic water. None of the three guards will go to bed tonight knowing that he was the one who killed a man. The state may lack compassion for its killers but not for the executioners.
“I hope to God he doesn’t hold his breath,” Carolyn says to me. She’s done her homework. If Burgos takes a deep breath of the gas, he’ll be unconscious in seconds and will die peacefully. If he holds his breath and fights it, he’ll likely go into convulsions, and this could last up to twenty minutes.
“Terrance Demetrius Burgos,” the prison guard begins, holding the clipboard away from his face. “You have been convicted by a court of law in this state of five separate violations of Article 4, Section 6-10(a), of the Criminal Code, to wit: the homicides of Elisha Danzinger, Angela Mornakowski, Jacqueline Davis…”
Carolyn Pendry makes a noise, leans forward, and, with a guttural groan, vomits on my shoe. I ignore the bile at my feet, offer her a handkerchief, and take her hand, lacing my fingers with hers. She attempts an apology, but there’s no need. She will not be the last one to react in such a way. There’s a doctor on call, in fact, for the witnesses.
“… Sarah Romanski, and Maureen Hollis.”
Terry Burgos has gained a good twenty pounds since his arrest, adding a second chin that covers his neck, his eyes reduced to tiny beads now. He has almost no hair on top; a few strands stick up over the leather restraint that covers his forehead. I look for it in those eyes, any sense of remorse or compassion. Or fear. I admit it, I want this to hurt.
“… jury has determined that these homicides were committed with premeditation and under special circumstances warranting the imposition of capital punishment…”
I feel the collective tension behind me, the mixed emotions of the people so angry and hurt, reliving the tragedy all over again over these last few weeks, now getting the justice that they clam ored for, begged the jury to impose.
“You have signed a written statement, notarized and validated by a court of law, indicating your choice of lethal gas.”
That, or electrocution. I’d have gone the other way. I can’t imagine anything worse than fighting for air.
I look at the two telephones on the wall, one black, one red, the latter connected directly to the governor’s mansion. Then I peek at the clock. Twelve on the dot.
When I look back at Burgos, he has settled his gaze on me. Now we have made eye contact, and I know he’s going to watch me as long as he can. I consider looking away, showing him the lack of respect he probably deserves, but I lock my stare on him. Maybe I owe him that much. Maybe every prosecutor should have to look in the eyes of the person he has condemned. Maybe that’s why I’m here, and why I agreed to visit him yesterday.
His tongue peeks out from between his thin lips. His eye winks but it seems involuntary. No human being, no matter how psychotic, could approach this punishment without some reaction. His fingers drum along the arm pads. His toes dance. His chest heaves. He is perspiring heavily, which is not an appealing sight on a man almost entirely naked.
“… are entitled to make any final statement at this time.”
Absolute silence. Terry Burgos has never apologized, never offered a single word of contrition. This is what the families are waiting for, I suspect-something, anything, to make this better.
His lips part but he says nothing. We are still staring at each other, so it seems that the families will not get what they wanted. Whatever he has to say, he will say to me.
