“I thought being away from the prison system would make me think about the things I’d seen less, but it was quite the opposite. I’d think about it all the time. It was like I’d taken the lid off Pandora’s Box and I couldn’t put it back on.
I’d open a bag of chips and smell the death chamber, or something on the radio would remind me of a conversation I’d had with an inmate, hours before he was executed. Or I’d see the wrinkled hands of Ricky McGinn’s mother, pressed against the glass of the death chamber, and I’d dissolve into tears.
–Michelle Lyons, former spokesperson for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, on the burden she carries from witnessing some 300 executions. McGinn was executed by lethal injection on September 27, 2000, for raping and murdering his 12-year-old stepdaughter.
On this day..
- 1733: Rebekah Chamblit - 2019
- 1943: Mao Zemin, brother of Mao Zedong - 2018
- 1517: Konrad Breuning, Tübingen Vogt - 2017
- 1929: Paul Rowland, cut short - 2016
- Feast Day of Saints Cosmas and Damian - 2015
- 1944: A Dutch Kapo named Raphaelson - 2014
- 1583: Elisabeth Plainacher, Vienna's only witchcraft execution - 2013
- 1975: The last executions under Franquismo - 2012
- 1906: Adolph Weber, nervy - 2011
- 1471: Thomas Neville, the Bastard Faulconbridge - 2010
- 1996: Dr. Mohammad Najibullah - 2009
- 1976: Three terrorists in Syria - 2008
- Themed Set: Semiramis - 2008