More and more Americans want to abolish the death penalty, but will it happen in time to save those already on death row?
IN HIS 12 years on death row, Larry Swearingen's execution date has been set three times. Three times he has known when he will be strapped to a stretcher and put down with drugs: sodium thiobarbital to anaesthetise him, pancuronium bromide to paralyse his muscles and potassium chloride to stop his heart.
In January 2009, he was on his way to the chamber when the stay of execution came through. ''The way I had to look at it was, 'I'm just gonna lay down and go to sleep','' he says. ''I wasn't gonna grovel. I wasn't gonna sit there and cry. I can't be remorseful for a crime that I didn't commit.''
Swearingen lives at the Allan B. Polunsky unit, an hour or so north of Houston. Together with another 292 men and 10 women awaiting execution for capital crimes committed in Texas, he is kept in solitary confinement. His cell is not quite four metres long and a little over two metres wide, with a slit above head height, more a vent than a window. He has a toilet, a typewriter, a radio and a hotplate. His one hour of daily recreation and exercise is spent alone, although he can talk and play chess through gaps between the cells. Most of his companions are here because they have committed horrendous acts of violence.
After the security check, a public relations officer escorts me to the visiting area. A hand-painted notice in the antechamber reads Do The Right Thing.
Swearingen and I have a booth at the near end, equipped with old-fashioned telephone handsets. He is strikingly calm, his voice rarely rising, even as he complains about the injustice of being locked up for a murder that forensic science shows he cannot have committed. ''It's not easy being here,'' he says. ''There are men who are hanging themselves, men who are cutting themselves, men sitting in their own faeces, men slowly losing their minds. If people think it's easy they are sadly mistaken.''
Source: Sydney Morning Herald, March 4, 2012
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