There are so many things I love about the Mac operating system. The screensaver above pulls from my iMac iPhoto. A delightful mix of employees, death row inmates and personal pix.
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Posts tagged as:
Death Row
MissouriDeathRow.com was one of the first websites I did. And it looks like it. This was before flickr and Typepad and such. So I'm doing a little make-over. Hope to have it complete by the end of the year.
I'm starting with images and documents related to those executed in Missouri's gas chamber. First time out, I just posted photos of the condemned. This time I'm posting the… not sure what to call it… the record or card for each inmate [flickr slideshow].
I scanned these from the state archives. For some reason, I find them fascinating.
The state archive has a file on each of the inmates executed in the gas chamber. I spent a week going through these, scanning as much as time allowed. Letters, notes, telegrams…
On June 24, 1962, Odom and another Death Row inmate attempted an escape. Odom's file contained a report by the guard on duty at the time. I've also included (from his appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court) a description of the crime for which Odom was executed.
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I watched the end of The Shawshank Redemption last night. It’s one of those movies you can watch over and over. I’ve seen all or parts of that movie… 10 or 15 times.
While watching the scene where Morgan Freeman appears before the parole board, I was reminded of some photos I scanned from the state archives while working on a website about Missouri’s Death Row. These are photos of the men (and one woman) who died in the gas chamber, when Missouri used that method of execution. These older B/W pix are somehow more powerful than the digital color shots they take today.
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Patrick Knight is scheduled to be executed later this month for the fatal shooting of his neighbors, Walter and Mary Werner, almost 16 years ago outside Amarillo. To come up with his final statement, Knight is accepting jokes mailed to him on Texas’ death row or emailed to a friend who has a Web site for him. The friend then mails him the jokes. Knight said the joke he finds the funniest will be his final statement the evening of June 26.
Knight said he got the idea for a joke as his last statement after a
friend, Vincent Gutierrez, was executed earlier this year and laughed
from the death chamber gurney: "Where’s a stunt double when you need
one?"
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I maintain a website called Missouri Death Row. No official connection to the Missouri Department of Corrections but it has become the de facto “official” website for capital punishment in Missouri. I struggle to keep the site current and was doing some research on one of the inmates currently sentenced to death:
“On December 9, 2002, Earl Forrest, who had been drinking, and his girlfriend, Angelia Gamblin, drove to Harriett Smith’s home. Forrest and Smith apparently had a falling out over a dishonored agreement with Smith to purchase a lawn mower and a mobile home for Forrest in exchange for Forrest introducing Smith to a source for methamphetamine. Forrest demanded that Smith fulfill her part of the bargain. During the ensuing melee, Forrest shot Michael Wells, a visitor at the Smith residence, in the face killing him. He also killed Smith, shooting her a total of six times.
Forrest removed a lockbox from Smith’s home containing approximately $25,000 worth of methamphetamine and returned to his home with Gamblin, where a shootout with the police ensued. The local sheriff was wounded and a deputy was killed. Forrest sustained a bullet wound to his face. Gamblin was shot twice, once in her shoulder and once in her back. Forrest finally surrendered and was charged with three counts of first-degree murder. He was found guilty on all three counts.”
Let me see if I have this right: I’ll introduce you to a source for meth…if you’ll buy my lawn mower and mobile home. How would two people ever come to that agreement?
“Come on, hook a sister up, will ya?”
“Well, I know this guy, but…”
“Look, help me score and I’ll buy your lawn mower AND your mobile home.”
Let’s skip the comments on this one. One of the arresting officers was killed and another wounded. One more sad, white trash story.
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From washingtonpost.com: “Vernon Lee Evans Jr. — amateur advice columnist and convicted murderer — is scheduled to die next month by lethal injection. He is one of the very few death row inmates to have a blog and, activists say, perhaps the only condemned man worldwide to use a blog to take questions from readers.”
I wondered about this a few years ago.
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The St. Louis Post-Dispatch published a story this week that looks at whether Larry Griffen was innocent of the crime for which he was executed in 1995. I blogged it on our Death Row site. One of our reporters (Julie Anderson) covered the execution and saved the audio of the pre and post-execution press conferences (16 min mp3). Ten years is a long time to hang on to that cassette. If you click over to the AUDIO-DOCUMENTS page of the site you’ll find some really interesting audio (if I do say so myself).
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Warning: Self-serving shop talk follows. The Radio-Television News Directors Association announced the winners in their annual Edward R. Murrow Awards competition today. This is kind of a big deal in the radio and TV news business. This year they started out with 3,182 entries and gave 74 awards to 53 news organization. The regional winners were announced a few weeks ago and today they announced the national winners. And one of our network websites won.
Entries fall into one of three categories (Network/Syndication Service, Large Market and Small Market) for radio and the same three for TV. And this year they added a category called Websiste Non-Broadcast.
Our entry (Missourinet.com) won in the Radio Network/Syndication Service category. Pretty cool given that the competition was ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, CNN and god only knows who else. You gotta figure there’s some “online journalists” in NY and Atlanta scratching their heads and asking each other, “What the hell is a Missourinet? Somebody get a map!”
For some reason the RTNDA website provide the urls of the Website winners but didn’t create links. That seems a little clueless to me.
*Radio Network/Syndication Service: Missourinet, Jefferson City, MO
*Television Network/Syndication Service: MSNBC
*Television Large-Market: News 14 Carolina, Charlotte, NC
*Television Small-Market: Capital News 9, Albany, NY
*Radio Large-Market: KSL-AM, Salt Lake City
*Radio Small-Market: WBLL-AM, Bellefontaine, OH
*Website Non-Broadcast: Washington Post, Washington; Belo Interactive, Dallas
I’ll probably never know what they judges liked about our site. And let’s face it, those big national network websites have some cool features our site does not. But I can name a few things we’ve got that are unique or cool or both:
Crash Reports: Missouri State Highway Patrol accident reports, updated 24/7.
Legislature.com: Live debate audio from the state legislature. Then we archive. We’ve got it back to 2002.
Supreme Court Arguments: Oral agurments (live & archived). I think we have nearly 500 arguments online.
Missouri Death Row: Ours has become the “official” site for Missouri.
Last time I checked, there were no other websites featuring this content. On the planet. At least not the way we do. Of course, there’s a lot we can do to improve our site but, for now, it’s nice to know someone appreciates the effort. The big award show is October 4th in NY. Gomer Goes to Manhatten in a Rented Tux.
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It’s been several years since I first saw these images (in the Missouri State Archives) and I still find them powerful. Each of these men (and one woman) were executed in Missouri’s gas chamber. A professional photographer could probably explain why these photos seem so much better than more recent inmate pix. Maybe it’s just black and white vs. color but I doubt it.
I believe my Death Row website was the first place these photographs were published online. It might still be the only place you can find them. I find it very gratifying that this kind of personal publishing is possible.
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Yesterday the Missouri Supreme Court overturned the death sentence and conviction of Joseph Amrine, 46, of Kansas City. He’s faced execution since 1986 for the stabbing of a fellow inmate. Over the years, the three former inmates who testified against him recanted. He was in for robbery, burglary and forgery and would have been out 1992 had he not been convicted of murder. If he walks free, he will become only the third Missouri death row inmate in modern times to be freed of his capital conviction. One of our reporters, John Davis, interviewed Amrine today. It runs about 15 minutes. You can also listen to the oral argument before the Missouri Supreme Court on February 4th. This strikes me as a good example of how the web –more specifically, streaming audio– enables a news organization like ours to go way beyond a 4-minute newscast with a couple of sound bites.
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