This is one of the probing philosophical questions Werner Herzog poses in the opening scene of Into the Abyss, his documentary film about the State of Texas execution chamber in Huntsville. The god-fearing interviewees – prisoners and State employees alike – clearly are not used to having their moral assumptions challenged in this way. A very humbling experience thanks to Herzog at his best. Herzog leads the prison chaplain, Reverend Fred Lopez, into relating a story of how he only just avoided killing a squirrel by breaking his golf cart just in time. The Rev. Lopez had already come close to tears thinking about God’s miraculous intervention in saving the squirrel from certain death, not realising until too late the absurdity of this juxtaposition with his day job. He is interviewed among rows (over 2,000) of numbered but unnamed crosses in the Joe Byrd Cemetery; nicknamed ‘Peckerwood Hill’ in reference to the poor, uneducated whites who are the cemetary’s principal occupants.
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| Joe Byrd Cemetary |
God seems to be the only consolation in an otherwise bleak Texan landscape occupied, or so it seems, only by the poor and dispossessed. For me, the most poignant moment of the film is the interview with Fred Allen, former captain of the death house team, whose job it had been to spend the last 8 to 10 hours with death row inmates meeting their last requests before strapping them onto the gurney ready for their lethal injection. And then, after pronounced dead, unstrapping them and transferring them onto the bier prior to disposal of the body. Allen explains to Herzog, how having personally been responsible for the execution of around 125 prisoners – obediently and automatically carrying out his ‘job’ with precision – that following his execution of Karla Faye Tucker, the first woman to be executed in Texas for 135 years, he had suddenly started shaking involuntarily and crying.
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| Fred Allen |
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| Karla Faye Tucker |
Far from receiving the sympathy, support and compensation for workplace related stress that most workers in Europe would have experienced, Allen’s nervous breakdown resulted in losing both his job and his pension. Presumably quitting such a role in Texas is tantamount to high treason. Karla Faye was executed in 1998, yet it was noted in the Washington Post that Allen quit his job in 2000 in response to the increasing numbers of executions that took place during George W. Bush’s five year reign as Govener of Texas. Bush personally endorsed 153 execution warrants, more than any other Governor in the history of Texas, ignoring the many pleas for clemancy including, in the case of Karla Faye, pleas from Pope John Paul II and Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi. Allen speaks movingly that during his mental breakdown, he visualised the faces of all the 125 inmates with whom he had shared their last hours of life. No one has the right to take another life, Allen concludes, I don’t care if it’s the law – it’s so easy to change the law. The law won't change, however, because the voters of Texas are so sold on the idea of God's retribution. Allen sums up his interview by repeating how someone had described to him the little 'dash' carved into tombstones between peoples’ birth date and the date of death. The most important thing Allen has come to realise, is knowing how you’re going to live your dash.
