As the US still carries on murdering people to prove that murdering people is wrong, it’s worth taking a look at a typical execution: Sept. 2, 1983. Mississippi. Jimmy Lee Gray. Asphyxiation. Officials had to clear the room eight minutes after the gas was released when Gray’s desperate gasps for air repulsed witnesses. His attorney, Dennis Balske of Montgomery, Alabama, criticized state officials for clearing the room when the inmate was still alive. Said noted death penalty defense attorney David Bruck, “Jimmy Lee Gray died banging his head against a steel pole in the gas chamber while the reporters counted his moans” (eleven, according to the Associated Press). Later it was revealed that the executioner, Barry Bruce, was drunk. OK, maybe not a good example, but there are plenty of other botched cases, and another nine chances to get it wrong to come. This month.
I waspresent at Grays execution and pulled the lever that introduced the cyanide to the acid. Gray did NOT suffer.
GRAY was LAWFULLY executed by the State of Mississippi for his murder
This is definitely something that I wuold not be telling about . I would not want anyone to know I had pulled a lever and allowed the state to kill someone to teach that killing is wrong.
To Mr Hocutt:
While there has been several attempts to cloud(pardon the pun) the gas chamber executions in your state, In my State we carried out 2 over the course of the last several years. It is a matter of perception as to whether or not the condemned suffers or is ever awake during his/her death. While there are other methods…gas should remain in use as a penalty for those that are the worst of the worst. There will be the anti penalty comments but rest assured Mr Hocutt…..they wont want the scumbags living next to them. On a side note…my position was venting the chamber after it has done its work.
Donald,
I read solaratoffs book and personally I thank you for the service yoy performed for all those years. My thoughts on Gray iis this..where were all these whineres when little Daressa was being suffocated by him.As far as I am concerned, Gray got exactly what he deserved.
Interestingly enough,I have talked to donald Hocutt,Fred Leuchter,”Charlie” (from the State of Missouri), Read the sloaritov book, studied this method of execution for the past 30 years and have come to a conclusion reagarding it. Your perception of the Gas chamber and what it does and how it works is vastly effected as you walk thru the oval door and have a seat,knowing that as many as 100 people have died in this very spot prior to your seating. Once the door closes you gain one of 2 things….a profound appreciation of this method of dispatching the criminal or you are scared to death. Insofar as seeing the gas chamber in action,I unfortunately did not ever get to witness an execution by gas. As previousloy stated, this method should be re-instated for the worst of the worst. Leathal injection while equally as fatal just doesnt get the point actross to the convict. We need to send the message that THIS IS GOING TO HURT,and if you hadn’t killed someone you wouldnt be strappped to a chair breathing cyanide gas right now.
In 1976, a little girl was murdered.Her name was Deressa Jean Seales. The brutality of the crime is alost unspeakable.
She was abducted by Jimmy Lee Gray. He took her into a wooded area and raped her. He then attempted to drown her in a shallow creek. As he started to walk away from what he thought was finished, he heard this poor little soul gurgle. She was face down in this little creek you see… He walked up to her and slammed his boot into the back of her neck breaking it.
She was 3 years old. THREE YEARS OLD…
While there has been NUMEROUS accounts of how Jimmy Lee Gray “suffered” at the hands of The State of Mississippi,as stated above he walked away THEN RETURNED( how did yo know that by the way) to ‘finish her off’ As Donald Hocutt said, he could have eaten a sandwich on his ( Grays) lap while he asphixiated. The point here is we are focusing on the offender of the murder in which he was punished for. We have all but forgotten the innocent 3 year old that mearly trusted an adult and wanted to play with kittens. I personally have no remorse for Jimjmy Lee Gray and concur that he should have been “done” differently. This mode of punishment while abohorrant according to witnesses is MEDICALLY proven to be nearly painless for the slob strapped in there. There NEEDS to be that 10-15 seconds of SHEER TERROR inflicted on the condemned so as to retribute the crime that caused him to be in there initially. I do not condone life incarceration or parole in cases of this nature. I do however wish that Edward Earl Johnson(fourteen days in may BBC documentary subject) had been afforded the benefit of a diminished capacity clause in Mississippi Law. Mississippi unfortunately seemed to rush to justice in that execution and it gave the impression that those involved were a bumnch of Rednecks gassing a black man. While Johnson ALLEGEDLY killed police officers there were no witnesses or anything by Illinois Standards that would have convicted him capitally. So, Gas their asses. Make them think for the last 10 seconds of their lives. And again thanks to those that used this AWESOME machine. Missed my calling.
I think we should introduce execution by mad dog as a viable form of punishment for scum like this.
Bind the condemned with a straight jacket and lower them headfirst into a pit of Rottwelier attack dogs, or perhaps rattlesnakes.
Another option might be to fly them out to sea in a helicopter, strap them into a blood soaked life vest and leave them for the sharks to find.
Jimmy Lee Gray (1949 – September 2, 1983) was convicted of the murder of three-year-old Deressa Jean Seales in 1976, after kidnapping and sodomizing her. At the time of this murder, he was free on parole following a conviction in Arizona of murder of a 16-year-old girl.
You can call it a botched job, I call it justice and well deserved.
It’s good that all these sawed-off fascists are coming out here and confessing their roles in carrying out a procedure that will be visited upon them.
Insofar as the Jimmy Lee Gray execution, it was a pinnacle of sorts. A: It was the 1st for the State of Mississippi in many years. It was the 1st for many of the participants in the process of execution.
Not to sound redundant but Gray deserved what he got. The matter of witness perception to a Legal Gassing is
that of the witness. Those of us that actually put on LAw Enforcement equipment each day know that 12 people could look at an apple and we would get 12 different stories about that apple. When California gassed Robert Alton Harris in I believe 1994,there was a media interview of the witnesses to this execution. All but one said that the procedure “appeared” to go without a hitch. Harris is no longer with us nor is Jimmy Lee Gray. When a sentence of Death is handed out,we MUST as a free society insure that it is carried out in
as quickly a manner possible. The gas needs to return.
That man didn’t deserve to die this way; he deserved something much worse!
To all you turds out there who think he suffered too much, too damn bad! He needed to suffer and I hope he is rotting in hell.
I would dare day if that had been your child you’d be singing a different tune.
The last comment is so typical of the narrow minded idiots who unfortunately share this earth. If you don’t agree with me you ‘turds’ I don’t believe in the death penalty no matter how bad the crime I believe in second chances every one placed in the wrong circumstances in the wrong environment at the wrong time is capable of murder. I know some people have to be removed from society but not murdered, so we murder to show its wrong – just great. Get rid of this draconian law leave it in the past where it belongs along with jim lets hope jim never gets wrongly convicted of anything he may just change his views although I doubt it.
Yvette, your reasoning works to a point. You have to remember that once you commit a crime this heinous (raping and killing a 3-year-old), you have relinquished your rights to belonging to humanity. It isn’t a matter of vengeance but survival. This kind of behavior is so menacing to society that murder is justified. That person has no right to a voice any longer.
The so called pain that he suffered in the gas chamber does not even come close to the pain that little girl must have felt. He should have banged his head till his brains fell out, then he should have been made to pick them up and hold them in his hands while he died.
You stupid people she was an innocent child….My God she was 3 YEARS OLD.