Doil was still restricted by leg irons, which allowed him to take only small, awkward steps. A prison guard was on each side of him, a third guard in the rear. Each of Doil's hands was secured to one of the guards alongside by an "iron claw" manacle device a single handcuff with a horizontal metal bar that enabled each guard to totally control one hand, so that any kind of resistance was impossible.
Doil was wearing a clean white shirt and black trousers. A jacket matching the trousers would be placed on him for burial. His shaved head shone where electrically conductive gel had been applied moments earlier.
The small procession had come down what was known as the "death watch corridor," passing through two armored doors, and Doil, when he chose to look up, would see for the first time the electric chair and the audience that had come to watch him die.
Finally he did, and at the sight of the chair, his eyes widened and his face froze with terror. He halted impulsively, averting his head and body as if to bolt away, but it was a split-second gesture only. The guards on both sides instantly twisted the iron claws, causing Doil to yelp with pain. All three guards then closed in on him, propelling him to the chair, and while he struggled in vain, they lifted him into it.
In his helplessness, Doil looked intensely at the red telephone on a wall to the right of the electric chair. As every condemned prisoner knew, it represented the only chance of a last-minute reprieve from the state governor. Doil stared at the phone, as if pleading for it to ring.
Suddenly he turned toward the glass separating him from the witness booth and began shouting hysterically. But because the glass was soundproof, Ainslie and the others could hear nothing. They simply watched Doil's face contort with rage.
He's probably ranting about Revelation, Ainslie thought grimly.
In earlier days the sounds within the execution chamber were transmitted to witnesses through microphones and speakers. Now, all that witnesses heard was the warden's reading of the death warrant, his prompting of the condemned for any last words, and whatever brief statement followed. Then for a moment Doil stopped and scanned the faces in the witness booth, causing several to fidget uncomfortably. When his eyes fell on Ainslie, Doil's expression changed to pleading, his lips framing words that Ainslie understood. "Help me! Help me!"
Ainslie felt beads of sweat break out on his forehead. What am I doing here? he asked himself. I don't want to be involved in this. Whatever he's done, it's wrong to kill anyone this way. But there was no means of moving. In a bizarre fashion, within this prison Ainslie and the others with him were prisoners, too, until Doil's execution was concluded. Then, when a guard on the execution floor moved, blocking Doil's view, Ainslie felt a flood of relief, while reminding himself that Doil had just confessed to fourteen vicious murders and dismemberments.
For a moment, he realized, he had fallen into the same warped trap as the mawkish protesters outside the prison caring about the murderer while forgetting his dead, savaged victims. Still, if cruelty was an issue, Ainslie thought, these last few minutes were probably the cruelest of all. No matter how fast the prison staff worked, the final procedures all took time. First, Doil was pulled back into the chair by the guards on either side and held there while a wide chest strap was cinched and secured; now, whatever else he did, he could no longer move his body. Next his feet were seized and pulled down into T-shaped wooden stocks, then secured by ankle straps so that neither foot could shift at all. More conductive gel was applied this time to his previously shaved right leg; after that a leadlined leather ground pad was put around the leg four inches above the ankle and laced tightly. Meanwhile the remaining straps had been cinched and tightened, including a chin-strap that held Doil's head immovably against the two upright wooden posts at the back of the chair. The brown leather death cap, resembling an ancient Viking helmet, which held a copper conductive plate inside, was poised above the chair like a Damoclean sword about to be lowered . . .
* * *
Ainslie wondered if electrical execution really was as savage and barbaric as so many claimed. What he was now seeing certainly seemed so, and there were other instances to support that belief. He knew of one a case nearly a decade ago. . .
On May 4, 1990, in Florida State Prison, a condemned prisoner named Joseph Tafero, convicted of killing two police officers, received an initial two thousand volts. Flames and smoke erupted at once as his head and a supposedly wet sponge beneath the death cap caught fire. The executioner immediately turned the current off. Then, for four minutes, the current was repeatedly turned on and off again, and each time more flames shot out and smoke poured from under a black mask covering Tafero's face. Through it all, Tafero continued to breathe and slowly nod his head until, after three voltage surges, he was finally declared dead. Witnesses were sickened; one fainted. Later an official statement admitted "there was a fault in the headpiece." Another claimed Tafero "was unconscious the minute the current hit him," though few witnesses believed it.
Some people, Ainslie was reminded, argued that execution should be barbaric, given the nature of the crime preceding it. The gas chamber, still used in the United States, killed a prisoner by suffocation with cyanide gas, and witnesses said it was a terrible, frequently slow death. There seemed a consensus that death by lethal injection was more humane though not in the case of former drug users with collapsed veins; finding a vein to administer the dose could take an hour. A bullet to the head, used in China, was probably swiftest of all, but the prior torture and degradation was undoubtedly the world's most bestial.
Would Florida adopt some other form of execution, perhaps lethal injection? Ainslie speculated. It seemed unlikely, given the public mood about crime, and widespread anger that criminals had brought the Sunshine State into international disrepute, thereby frightening away tourists, so vital to Florida's livelihood.
As to his own feelings about capital punishment, he had been opposed to it as a priest and was against it now, though for different reasons.
Once upon a time he had believed all human life to be divinely inspired. But not anymore. Nowadays he simply believed that judicial death morally demeaned those who administered it, including the public in whose name executions were carried out. Also, whatever the method, death was a release; a lifetime in prison without parole was a greater punishment by far. . .
* * *
The warden's voice interrupted Ainslie's thoughts, this time transmitted to the witness booth, as he read aloud the black-bordered death warrant, signed by the state governor.
" 'Whereas . . . Elroy Selby Doil was convicted of the crime of murder in the first degree, and thereupon . . . sentenced for said crime to suffer the pains of death by being electrocuted by the passing through his body of a current of electricity . . . until he be dead . . .
" 'You the said Warden of our State Maximum Security Prison, or some deputy by you to be designated, shall be present at such execution . . . in the presence of a jury of twelve respectable citizens who shall be requested to be present, and witness the same; and you shall require the presence of a competent practicing physician . . .
" 'Wherefore fail not at your peril . . .' "
The document was lengthy, burdened by pompous legalisms, and the warden's words droned on.
When he was finished, a prison guard held a microphone before Doil, and the warden asked, "Do you have any last words?"
Doil tried to wriggle but was too tightly secured. When he spoke, his voice was choked. "I never..." Then he spluttered, trying vainly to move his head while managing only a feeble "Fuck you!"