Death Watch Journal for Kevin Varga – DAY 65

They have added two more people to our small community today. For some odd reason a scene from the movie Pink Floyd’s: The Wall popped into my head. There is a scene where the children are lined up on a conveyor belt and as the conveyor reaches the end the school children are deposited into a huge meat grinder. I know that the visual imagery there is quite ghoulish, but that is what jumped into my head as these two men were brought in and placed within their cells to start their own “count down to extinction”.

I am the next in line to be placed into once of the observation cells. There are two cells on death watch that are equipped with cameras, and as each man’s date looms closer he is placed in one of these two cells, the current occupants have dates for this week and next so if the man this week either gains a stay or is executed, I will be placed into his cell downstairs. Funny that the state so jealously guards their right to kill isn’t it? I mean they place a man into one of these cells equipped with a camera only to prevent someone from taking their own life. I feel that it should be the right of the individual to decide whether or not to live to be executed. The state of Texas would adamantly refute this, case in point; a few years ago (when Death Row was house on the Ellis I unit) a man who had an execution date decided that he would rather die by his own hand rather than to submit to the whims of the State. He took a box cutter and cut his own throat! The officers came into his cell and tried to staunch the blood, ultimately the man was taken to the hospital and had his throat sewn up and the state saved this mans life. Not twenty-four hours later they lead that same man into their execution chamber, strapped him to the table, his neck still had the fresh stitches from the hospital, and stopped his heart with a lethal dose of poisons. Had they just stood by they could have allowed the man to die “his way”. Yes I know there are legal ramifications to that line of thinking, but seriously! I am not looking forward to being placed into the camera cell and living out what may remain of my life like an exhibit in some exotic zoo.