A former British prison officer has revealed the three ways death row prisoners “normally” react before their execution. Alex South has worked at some of the UK’s toughest and most notorious prisons during her career as an officer in the prison service.
Her job as a senior officer and custodial manager gave her a detailed insight into the brutal realities of life in prisons such as HMP Whitemoor, HMP Wormwood Scrubs, and HMP Belmarsh. But it was a trip to a death row facility in the US that has left a lasting impression on the former screw.
Ms South visited the Allan B. Polunsky Unit in Texas, where she inspected the death row unit and execution chamber.
In a conversation with her US fellow prison guards working the beat, she asked them what was the hardest part of their job.
And their reply came as a surprise to the British officer, who thought she already knew what the answer would be.
“I remember they said that you have three scenarios when you are walking those prisoners,” she told LADbible’s Tom Earnshaw.
“And the first one is that they fight and you have to physically restrain them in order to get them to the gurney.
“The second one is when they’re passive and they just walk.
“And they said the worst bit is the third scenario when they are apologetic, but they have to be carried because they say ‘I can’t make my legs work’.”
The US executed 25 people, all male, in 2024 – three by nitrogen hypoxia and twenty-two by lethal injection.
Utah, South Carolina, and Indiana conducted their first executions after more than a decade hiatus. Alabama became the first state to use nitrogen gas to carry out the death sentences.
Six of the 25 (24%) people executed were 21 or younger at the time of the crime for which they were convicted and sentenced.
This year, a South Carolina man became the first US death row inmate to be executed by a firing squad in the last 15 years.
Jeffrey Collins, a reporter for the Associated Press news agency, said at a news conference that Brad Sigmon had a red bullseye target placed over his heart.
When he was shot, his chest rose and fell several times, the reporter added.
Sigman was convicted of bludgeoning his ex-girlfriend’s parents to death with a baseball bat in 2001 before kidnapping her at gunpoint. She was later able to escape.
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