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September 2008
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Carroll Pickett recorded tapes about each of 95 inmates
who were executed while he was Death House chaplain.
by Dara McCoy
What would it be like to
watch 95 people be executed? What kind of solace can be provided
to them in their final hours? What if those responsibilities
were part of doing a job? These are the questions addressed in
At the Death House Door, an Independent Film
Channel (IFC) documentary on the life of Carroll Pickett
’54 and his 15 years as chaplain at the Texas State Penitentiary
in Huntsville, Texas. From 1982 to 1995, Pickett walked “through
the valley of the shadow of death” with 95 prisoners sentenced
to death by lethal injection. They weren’t his valleys, but
serving as the guide for those walks was terrifying enough.
The documentary premiered on IFC
May 29 and was described as “a quiet powerhouse that leaves you
thinking about the central issues and character long after the
lights have gone up,” by a Dallas Morning News writer.
Pickett allowed camera crews into his living room and relived his
experiences as Death House chaplain. He also opened his collection
of cassette recordings, in which he had bared his soul to the
recorder after each execution.
“It was difficult,” said Pickett
of opening the tapes to the production crew. “I had done the tapes
for me alone, and they were put away for good.” He said the
producers took the time to listen to the tapes and asked questions
about memories he had suppressed long ago. “Several times, it really
hurt to hear the things I had been through and to recall those men
who I was with all day and night,” he said.
The documentary chronicles
Pickett’s life after graduating from Austin College. He attended
Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary where he was told by one
professor in 1957, “I am convinced that your ministry is destined to
focus on the dying, lending comfort to those faced with death and
those who are losing loved ones.” His professor’s words became very
real in 1974 when several prisoners took hostages at “The Walls”
unit of the Huntsville State Prison in an 11-day standoff, the
longest in United States history.
At the time, Pickett was the
minister of the Presbyterian Church in Huntsville. Jim Estelle, one
of his church members and the director of prisons, asked Pickett to
come and minister to the families of the prison employees taken
hostages. Then, Pickett was told that two hostages were faithful
members of his own congregation. The prisoners allowed the hostages
to call their families. During one call, the women from Pickett’s
church told him their wishes for their funeral services.
On August 3, 1974, the hostage
crisis ended violently on the front ramp of the prison during an
escape attempt. Two leaders of the crisis lay dead, and two of the
11 hostages were murdered by the prisoners. Both were Pickett’s
church members. That day Pickett said he would never return to the
prison.
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September 2008
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Going Back
Five years later, Pickett did go
back to the Huntsville prison, taking a job as the prison chaplain
in an attempt to save a marriage strained by the time-consuming work
of pastoring a church. “When I went to work there, I didn’t breathe
walking up that ramp,” Pickett said of his first day. “I got to the
place right there at that corner where Judy and Yvonne were shot,
and went to the library and there were still bullet holes. You could
still see the blood stains.”
When Pickett first began as
chaplain, six people attended service in the prison’s chapel, but he
went to work gathering a new congregation of thieves, murderers, and
other criminals. He started a choir that attracted several talented
inmates, one of whom had been a backup singer for Don Ho and another
who was a former Texas Supreme Court justice.
In 1982, Pickett once again
faced death in his ministry. The Huntsville prison was scheduled to
administer the first execution by lethal injection in the United
States. “Nowhere in my job description did it say anything about
executions,” Pickett said in the film. Yet, the prison director
assigned Pickett to minister to the condemned inmates, transferred
from Death Row to the Huntsville death chamber on the day of
execution. He stayed with the condemned prisoners during their final
18 hours and was at their side when the lethal injection was
administered. “It is hard to tell anybody, even the meanest person,
that it’s time to go,” Pickett said.
Pickett would fill this role 95
times. He even faced the personal conflict of ministering to Ignacio
Cuevas, the one surviving inmate from the 1974 hostage crisis that
resulted in the deaths of his church members. At the time of Cuevas’
execution, Pickett approved of capital punishment and felt disgust
that even in Cuevas’ final hours he never mentioned his role in the
1974 hostage crisis. “I wanted him to bring it up,” Pickett said.
“He talked about murdering, slashing, and killing all these other
people, but he didn’t bring it up. The whole idea of justice and
fairness was not in his system.”
The execution of another
prisoner, Carlos DeLuna, changed Pickett’s stance on capital
punishment. In their time together, he became convinced DeLuna was
innocent. Despite his reservations about capital punishment, Pickett
continued to minister in his role as Death House chaplain. “I
believe that the ‘ministry of presence’ is so important for anyone
who is about to die … No one should die without a friend,” said
Pickett.
The story of DeLuna’s possible
innocence interested two Chicago Tribune reporters in 2005.
They contacted Pickett in February 2006 and were involved in the IFC
documentary filming as well. The documentary gave Pickett an
opportunity to speak out against the death penalty for the first
time since he retired from the prison in 1995. “I have given 275
radio, TV, phone, and personal interviews and traveled over 26,000
miles to promote the film and speak after each showing,” Pickett
said. He has spoken to the Texas Democratic Caucus, to church
congregations, and on Capitol Hill to the Judiciary Committee of the
House of Representatives.
Pickett’s experiences in the
Death House remain with him. “I have been there 95 times and most
people will never see what it is like,” Pickett said of a practice
he now sees as unfair and immoral. ”I want people, through this
film, to feel something and do something about it.”
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