It was a landmark moment on Huntsville’s death row, but few within the penitentiary’s walls had history on their minds. The Texas prison officials’ single-minded attention to duty ensured that the state’s 500th execution since 1982 would go off without a hitch. “We simply carried out the court’s order,” said Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Jason Clark on behalf of the anonymous crew who had just put Kimberly McCarthy to death. In the busy execution chamber, it was business as usual.
The relatives of victim Dorothy Booth were more concerned with retribution than with statistics. In 1997, the 71-year-old retired college professor was fatally stabbed and beaten after agreeing to give McCarthy – her neighbor – a cup of sugar. The killer had cut off Booth’s finger to remove her wedding ring, which was then pawned to buy crack cocaine.
Booth’s godson, Randall Browning, told reporters that the victim’s family and friends were “just thinking about the justice that was promised to us by the state of Texas,” and that they would “accept closure in whatever form comes our way.” They had waited almost sixteen years to see McCarthy die. “The finality of this event has allowed me to say goodbye to my mother,” said Booth’s daughter Donna Aldred.
It had been a lengthy and arduous process to get to that point. McCarthy had successfully appealed her conviction in 2002, but a retrial later that year reinstated her death sentence. DNA evidence also tied McCarthy to the killings of two other elderly women, but she was never charged with either of those murders.
The condemned inmate made no reference to her unfortunate place in history as the needles were inserted, and among her final words were that she was “going home to be with Jesus,” and “God is great.” McCarthy did have time to tell her attorney, her spiritual adviser, and her ex-husband that she loved them, but the victim’s family was ignored.
Then she closed her eyes, breathed loud and hard for a few seconds as the drugs took effect, and a few seconds later stopped breathing altogether. She was pronounced dead 20 minutes after the executioners began the grim process of administering a lethal dose of pentobarbital.
McCarthy was the fourth woman to be executed in Texas, and the 13th put to death in all states, since the Supreme Court reintroduced capital punishment in 1976. In that time, more than 1300 males have also been executed; 40% of them in Texas.
Outside the prison, a group of about 40 protestors from Houston and Dallas congregated in one car park, while a smaller group of death penalty supporters gathered together in another area of the Huntsville Unit grounds. For the supporters, McCarthy’s death meant that justice had been done. “It’s an eye for an eye,” said one, echoing the sentiments of Governor Rick Perry, whose “tough on crime” stance has seen him sign off on more executions than any state governor in history. Since capital punishment returned to its statutes in 1982, Texas has put to death almost five times as many inmates as any other state: Virginia, next on the death-list, has executed about 110.
Protestors waved placards and chanted slogans highlighting what they consider the “racist and anti-poor” bias of the punishment. McCarthy’s lawyer, Maurie Levin, who on Tuesday had asked the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to review the jury selection process – only one black juror served on the panel which condemned his African-American client – also criticized the high number of executions. “I look forward to the day when we recognize that this pointless and barbaric practice, imposed almost exclusively on those who are poor and disproportionately on people of color, has no place in a civilized society,” Levin said in a prepared statement.
Governor Perry claims that he loses no sleep over the multitudes put to death on his watch. In 2011, NBC’s Brian Williams asked Perry, “Have you struggled to sleep at night with the idea that any one of those might have been innocent?” “No, sir, I’ve never struggled with that at all,” the governor replied.
He has lost no sleep over the death of Cameron Todd Willingham, executed in 2004 on flawed forensic evidence, or over the lethal injection administered to Steven Michael Woods in 2011 for murders committed by another man (who received a life sentence after plea bargains). He has expressed no concern at the number of severely retarded individuals who have been executed during his time in office, and there is no sign that he is likely to intervene in the upcoming execution of Larry Swearingen, who may have already been in jail when the murder which landed him on death row was committed.
According to Reverend Carroll Pickett, who served as prison chaplain from 1980 to 1995, “I know for a fact that I watched four innocent men being killed by the state of Texas.” One of those was Carlos de Luna, executed in 1989 for a crime committed by someone else. The system was – and is – deeply flawed, and is almost certainly worth losing sleep over.
The undeniable fact is that executions remain as scattershot in Texas as they are anywhere else. 500 in 30 years is a terrible statistic, and yet each year in Texas, more than 1000 murders are committed. A place on death row can sometimes be seen as little more than bad luck – usually in the form of inadequate counsel or the occasional need “to encourage the others”.
If this is true justice, it is seemingly more random than deliberate. Whether right or wrong, the application of capital punishment in America is undeniably something of a lottery. On Wednesday, June 26, Kimberly McCarthy’s number came up.