Joe Dillard - 03 - Injustice for All Read Online Free PDF Page A

female newspaper reporters, dressed in their dark business suits. So much time has passed since the crime occurred that the state and national media have moved on to more pressing matters. Tanya Reid is old news, perversely obsolete in our fast-moving society. As I look at them, I can’t help but wonder what kind of effect this is going to have. These young journalists, at once inexperienced and arrogant, have a condescending air about them as they prepare their “concerned” look for the live shot outside the prison later on. I wonder how they’ll feel about their love affair with professional voyeurism after they’ve watched a man die fifteen feet from their notepads.
    At precisely the appointed time, they bring Johnson out into the death chamber in a white hospital gown, cuffs, and shackles. A steel wall separates the witnesses from the condemned. There’s a window, much like the one through which newborn babies are viewed in a maternity ward. I muse over the irony for a moment, then put it out of my mind… .
    Johnson is short and doughy, with neatly cut black hair, a double chin, and a clean-shaven face. The monster is forty-one years old, but he looks no more than thirty. He’s spent nearly half of his life in prison, but if you replaced the hospital gown with a jacket, slacks, and a tie, he’d look like the neighbor who passes the collection plate in church on Sunday mornings.
    The prison’s representatives are here, too. Warden Tommy Joe Tester is leading Johnson into the chamber, followed by two massive prison guards in black uniforms. The chaplain, a physician, and two stone-faced medical technicians wearing white coats follow only a pace behind.
    Johnson stops his shuffle and looks out over the audience mournfully. No one from his own family has come to watch him die. Until this point, he has at least attempted to remain stoic, but his lips begin to tremble and his shoulders slump. As the guards help him onto the gurney, he begins to weep. The guards remove his cuffs and shackles and replace them with leather straps attached to the gurney. Then they step back against the wall.
    “That’s it, cry, you son of a bitch,” I hear Tanya’s father mutter from his front-row seat. “Go out like the coward you are.”
    The warden, dressed in a navy blue suit, steps forward holding a piece of paper.
    “Phillip Todd Johnson,” the warden says in a nasal Southern twang, “by the power vested in me by the state of Tennessee, I hereby order that the sentence of death handed down by the Criminal Court of Washington County in the matter of State of Tennessee versus Phillip Todd Johnson be carried out immediately. Do you have any last words?”
    There’s a brief pause, and then a pitiful wail.
    “I’m sorry,” Johnson cries. “I’m so very sorry. I couldn’t help myself. May God forgive me.”
    I don’t know what God’s attitude toward him will be, but the state of Tennessee doesn’t seem to be in a forgiving mood.
    “May God have mercy on your soul,” the warden says as the executioners efficiently hook an IV into Johnson’s left forearm.
    Three different drugs will be injected into his body: five grams of sodium thiopental, which will render him unconscious, followed by one hundred milligrams of pancuronium bromide, which will block the neuromuscular system and cause his breathing to cease, and one hundred milliliters of potassium chloride, which will stop his heart. Each of the three doses would be lethal on its own, but the state wants to make damned sure he’s dead and that he doesn’t feel a thing. Those who are enlightened about such things consider this to be the most humane method of killing a human being.
    Johnson continues to cry as the chaplain prays. Suddenly, the microphone inside the death chamber is turned off. All we can do now is watch. The prison physician steps forward while one of the EMTs walks behind a wall, presumably to release the first dose of fatal drugs. I want to close my