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| Ten Years After Last Execution, California’s Death Row Continues to Grow |
| By theintercept.com- Liliana Segura |
| Published: 01/18/2016 |
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TEN YEARS AGO TODAY, on January 17, 2006, California executed Clarence Ray Allen, the oldest person ever put to death in the state. It was just after midnight — the day after Allen’s 76 birthday — and the execution was couched in controversy. Allen was legally blind, diabetic, and relied on a wheelchair. He had suffered a heart attack the previous fall. Later, when he asked that they just let him die if he were to have another heart attack before his execution date, prison officials said they could do no such thing. Yet when the press told the story of Allen’s death, the prevailing descriptions were of a man in fine health — not nearly as weak as described by the attorneys who had tried to save his life. “In final moments, killer didn’t seem so frail,” read the headline in the San Francisco Chronicle, which noted Allen’s “robust ability”: how he stood up on his own from his wheelchair before being helped to the gurney by four prison guards; how he “vigorously craned his head” toward his supporters in the viewing chamber. California Assemblyman Todd Spitzer, who witnessed the execution, called it “incredibly humane,” remarking, “For 76 years old, he looked to be in remarkably good shape.” When it was revealed that officials at San Quentin had to inject Allen with a second deadly dose of potassium chloride — raising potential questions about the efficacy of the state’s execution protocol — the Associated Press presented this as proof that the “barrel-chested prisoner’s heart was strong to the end.” The narrative was comforting in its reassurances: Regardless of any last legal challenges or activist hysterics, this was a dangerous killer, not a feeble old man. And Allen certainly had much blood on his hands: Sentenced to life in prison for killing his accomplice in a 1974 robbery, he was then convicted and sentenced to death a few years later for ordering three more murders while behind bars at Folsom Prison. In a state that had struggled to carry out executions for decades, Allen’s death could be seen as a righteous way to usher in what was expected at the time to be a busy era for the execution chamber. With appeals running out for a number of prisoners, 2006 was to be the year California resumed executions “at a pace unseen in more than a generation,” according to the Sacramento Bee. Read More. |
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