The Informant

KALW’s Nancy Mullane will witness Thursday’s execution (should it happen) at San Quentin. Here are some of her thoughts on getting prepared for the experience:

I never thought I would be asked to witness an execution. I imagine it to be one of those dark and hopeless moments that happens out of sight in a room deep inside a prison. The state’s execution of a fellow human being is something you read about in the paper, or see out of the corner of your eye on television, but you never imagine yourself sitting in the room while another person is put to death. I never imagined it, anyway. Not, that is, until late last week.

That’s when Sam Robinson, San Quentin State Prison’s public information officer called KALW News to let us know that after reporting on prisons for four years, I had been selected to be one of the nine media members to witness the execution of Albert Greenwood Brown, a 56-year-old man convicted of raping and murdering a 15-year-old girl in 1980.

The reason I never thought it would come up, even with my 50-plus trips inside the prison to report on the lives of men convicted of murder, was that a little more than four years ago, a judge put a temporary halt to executions in the state. The Marin County Superior Court judge who issued the stay, Verna Adams, said she was concerned that the way the CDCR (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation) was administering lethal injections was inflicting cruel and unusual punishment on the prisoner as he died. So she ordered the state to stop executing prisoners using the three lethal drugs (sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride) until the CDCR came up with a more humane way to administer the lethal cocktails. So no matter how many times I have been inside San Quentin and had walked past the heavy door with the words “condemned row” etched overhead, I never thought my work as a reporter would lead me to this moment in time.

It wasn’t that I was avoiding death row. Reporters don’t have access to condemned inmates. So, over the years I’ve walked past the door leading to East Block and the cells of the condemned, and I’ve spent time documenting the lives of the men convicted of murder who are serving life sentences with the possibility of parole. What I’ve discovered is that when convicted murderers are paroled, they have the lowest recidivism rate of all categories of crime: less than 3%.

Originally, the execution of Brown was scheduled to be carried out inside San Quentin State Prison first thing Wednesday morning, September 29th, at 12:01 am. But yesterday, September 27th, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger issued a temporary reprieve to give the courts enough time to consider all of the appeals. Now, Albert Greenwood Brown’s execution has been rescheduled by the CDCR to take place on Thursday, September 30th, at 9pm.

With just 50 hours to go before the rescheduled execution, I have downloaded the CDCR’s 42 page, step-by-step guide to the “Lethal Injection Regulations.” It outlines how the prison selects the staff members to act as Lethal Injection Team Members. Some of the criteria is they have “no prior stress claims” and that they “have a basic understanding of the effects of the three chemicals used in the lethal injection process.” It also states that the names of the Lethal Injection Team members “shall not be released, nor shall they be available for inerviews or photographs for safety and security purposes.”

It instructs witnesses (me) to wear “no blue jeans”, and that we will have to leave any “camera, cellphone, blackberries, tape recorders, recording devices, electronic devices, drawing implements or other similar equipment” outside the witness area. It also says that media witnesses will be given pencils and notepads and that “all witnesses shall view an execution orientation video” instructing us how we will be expected to behave during the execution.

I spoke with Sam Robinson, San Quentin’s public information officer. He said the prison will be on lockdown beginning Thursday morning, and witnesses are to show up at 4 p.m. on Thursday to prepare for the experience. Will it happen? No one knows, yet. If the execution doesn’t happen Thursday, it probably won’t happen until January at the earliest. It turns out the state’s supply of the drug needed to stop Brown’s heart, sodium thiopental, expires on Friday and there isn’t any new supply of the drug available until next year.