Executions more popular

Press, 22 October 1984, Page 8

Executions more popular

NZPA staff correspondent Washington Executions in the United States are becoming more and more common, and the scenes outside the prisons can be ugly. Two groups usually gather — some, opposed to the death penalty, with candles, others cheering the news of the prisoner’s death. Deborah Wyatt, aged 35, is a Virginian lawyer who spent more than a year trying to save Linwood Briley, a man convicted of the murder of seven people,

from the electric chair. On October 13 the appeals ran out (the executions are increasing because judges have become impatient with long-drawn-out appeal procedures) and Briley — protesting his innocence to the end — was electrocuted at the Virginia state penitentiary in Richmond. Outside, the pro-death penalty demonstrators jeered and set off fireworks in celebration as the sombre anti-death penalty protesters on the other side of the street, some crying, some hugging each other, sang, “We Shall Overcome,” “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” and “Amazing Grace.” The police kept the two groups (about 500 in all) apart. Ms Wyatt, according to custom, witnessed her client’s execution.

She left the prison, according to the “Washington Post,” “glassy-eyed and trembling.”

She then had to walk through the demonstrators, who were waving the old southern Confederate flag and shouting, “Burn, baby, burn,” to get to her car. “We want to return to the days in Richmond when this flag flew proudly,” said a man, aged 23. “He’s gone, brother,” one man yelled. “He’s gone to hell and got burned,” "I’m glad it’s happening, honey,” said a woman. “As a taxpayer, I’m tired of paying for his room and board.” “Fry him,” some had shouted before. “Bum, Briley, burn.” “Fry the son of a bitch.”

For those who were not there, the “Post” gave graphic eye-witness reports: the way Briley’s fingers tightened, “almost in a fist, but in a deranged manner,” the odour of burnt flesh, which one lawyer could smell in spite of a stuffedup nose, and the “little

smoke” wafting off his right leg. The “Post” described “the heavy oak chair,” Briley’s last meal, and the way guards seated him, strapped his legs, arms and chest, placed a metal cap, to which electrodes were attached, on his head and a mask over his face, leaving just his nose exposed, how his eyes were closed and he shook.

The “Post” also reported the reporters, the “gallows humour” pervading the makeshift press room, journalists wondering whether the lights would dim and goggling at the name of the doctor who would certify death, Dr Robert Fry. The article even included a description of what Ms Wyatt was wearing “a black suit and stockings.” One of Briley’s brothers is on death row in a prison west of Richmond and another is serving a life sentence for murder. The

police linked the three brothers and an accomplice to a murder spree that terrorised Richmond in 1979.

James Briley, on death row at Powhatan Correctional Centre, felt that “I’d rather be going through it myself than watching Linwood ...” the “Post” reported faithfully; and Briley’s mother took the news of his execution “very badly.”