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| Oklahoma new death chamber |
A tour of Oklahoma’s state-of-the-art killing room unveils how the state spent thousands on restraints, an electric bed and medical equipment, but also how a theatre of transparency hides actual practices
How much does it cost to revamp a death chamber in a prison that hosted a
notorious botched execution into a state-of-the-art, 21st century, humane and civilised killing machine? $106,042.60 – or so says the state of Oklahoma.
This week Oklahoma opened the doors of its maximum-security state penitentiary in McAlester to show off its spanking-new redesigned execution suite. It was a display of conspicuous transparency put on for the benefit of the media, which was paradoxical in the circumstances, as one of the main changes made under the renovation is to slash the number of media witnesses at all future executions by more than half.
As part of the media tour, the prison authorities handed reporters an itemised balance sheet that listed all the expenses that had gone into the upgrade. The 144 entries ranged from the mundane – $516.92 spent on new carpeting, $358.42 for paint stripper, $55.24 on “nuts and bolts” – to the more resonant.
Almost $2,000 were spent on restraints – four brown leather straps, one for each of the offender’s hands and one for each ankle. There was an order for 34 needles, as well as a set of new syringes for administering the lethal drugs.
And then there was the listing for a “surgical table”, commonly known as a gurney, costing a substantial $12,500. In case Oklahoma taxpayers are tempted to complain about such lavish expense, it should be pointed out that the new gurney is likely to see plenty of use: the last one was purchased by the state in the 1950s and was the centrepiece of at least 111 judicial killings.
Scott Crow, the department of corrections administrator of field operations who conducted the tour, waxed lyrical about the capabilities of the new death bed. “This is an electric bed which has the ability to raise or lower to accommodate the needs not only of witnesses in the viewing areas but any needs as far as the offender is concerned,” he said.
He pressed a set of buttons beneath the gurney so that the assembled media representatives could see it rise and fall, rise and fall, with the cheerful smoothness of a carousel horse.
Source: The Guardian, Ed Pilkington, October 10, 2014
