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By Newsweek Editors
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There is life on death row. After the bloodshed, after the trial, after the withering sentence, condemned inmates are sent off to tightly confined corners of their state prison systems to die. But mostly they wait. And then wait some more. Since 1976, 266 prisoners have been executed in the United States: on average it takes almost eight years before an anonymous executioner pulls a switch, tightens a noose, drops the pellets or uncorks a lethal dose of poison.
Last year photographer Ken Light went to Huntsville, Texas, to record the lives of the condemned. His assignment was to go where cameras are seldom permitted. His timing was fortuitous, for once again the nation's attention has turned to the question of capital punishment. Confronted with a serious fear-of-crime problem, politicians have reached again for the death penalty palliative. Congress added several dozen more crimes to the list punishable by death. New York elected a new governor willing to sign the death penalty into law. Federal and state officials looked for ways to speed the process along. But try as they might, the nation's lawmakers have yet to build a satisfactory system. By all accounts, it's still cumbersome and expensive, still unable to eliminate factors such as race, resources and politics from the invocation of the ultimate punishment.
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Photographer Light went to Texas, which leads the nation in executions 92 since l976 and vies with California for the largest death-row population. Each state houses roughly 400 condemned inmates. But California has executed only two men in 10 years, both by gas, a practice that has now been held cruel and unconstitutional by a federal court.
Over eight months, Light found himself visiting the oddest of communities, a place where men count the inexorable passage of time as both a victory and a threat. The condemned were united by their banishment from civil society but divided by their privileges. Some inmates worked in the prison factory-the Death Row Garment Factory turning out uniform trousers, among other items. It's a surprising sight: convicted killers peaceably wielding knives and scissors in the service of the state. Back on the row, others spend their days locked in their cells. Some watch the bank of television sets that line the cellblock. (Each day, the inmates vote on programming.) Others pass their time doing arts-and-crafts work building clocks, carving jewelry boxes, braiding macrame.
Light worked for 21 days in Ellis I-- as death row is called. Only one thing was off limits: an execution. One of his visits to Ellis began on Easter Sunday. It was an unusual day. The hard-boiled eggs for breakfast were colored blue: the stone walls echoed chorus of "Amazing Grace." And Richard Beavers was preparing to die for the robbery-murder of Doug Odle eight years earlier. Convicted in 1988, Beavers skipped ahead in the death march by dropping all his appeals. (At least 10 of the executed Texans have volunteered to die.) Light saw Beavers for the last time in the "death watch" cell--an isolation area--where inmates are kept for their final hours. Shortly before an execution, prison officials transfer the inmate to "The Walls," where he's strapped to a gurney for a lethal injection. Twenty-nine minutes into Easter Monday, Beavers was pronounced dead.
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