Steven Thompson, Part 3 - The Death Row Visit

Some Murderers I Have Known

Steven Thompson, Part 3 - The Death Row Visit

(WARNING: This post is a discussion of a visit to death row. If that’s likely to keep you from sleeping, you should go read Calvin and Hobbes or Pearls Before Swine and wait for next week’s post.)

After Steve and I had corresponded for awhile, I went to see him. His mother needed a ride, and Steve thought I’d be okay to meet. I’m not sure when this was. He was executed May 8, 1998, so it must have been before that; but not too much before. I’m sorry I don’t have a really coherent narrative this week; but the visit was just about 20 years ago, so I won’t insult your intelligence by pretending to remember most of what happened. Let me just jot down some of the memories that jump into my dreams from time to time. 

When we signed in with the guards, our belongings were inspected and we were checked for contraband. This didn’t make as much of an impression on me as it would have a normal human since I’ve been wandering in and out of secure buildings my entire professional life; but I could tell that a lot of the other people were feeling very put-upon by the process.

After I got there, I felt terrible for going. Steve had recently gotten the word that he would be transferred to Atmore for execution. I realized, too late, that every minute I spent with Steve was a precious minute stolen from his mother; and she had a very short time left to talk to her son. Strangely enough, that’s not how she viewed it. She was delighted that her son had a friend his own age who cared about him enough to visit him in prison. She encouraged us to spend as much time together as possible. I still felt bad, though. 

While I was there, I was really curious about how normal all the murderers looked. I expected them to be a particularly rough bunch of men; but the ones I saw weren’t. If they hadn’t been wearing prison clothes, none of them would have looked out of place at a hockey game on Saturday night or in church on Sunday morning. The visiting area was a cafeteria about the size of a basketball court. There were ladies behind the counter who would sell them food if their families were willing to buy it. Steve’s mother bought some candy bars and a coke for him, and he was careful to thank the ladies for taking care of him. It was exactly like a normal interaction in a normal lunchroom, except that he went on to tell them goodbye since he was on his way to be executed “down south” and wouldn’t see them again.

After he got his food, we sat together in a patch of sun and he raised his face to catch all of the sunlight that he could. He paused and luxuriated in the light that had so recently come from the free air outside the prison. Undoubtedly, sunlight was not a frequent visitor to his cell in the depths of the building. After a few moments he lowered  his face, looked at me, and continued with the visit as if nothing had happened.

I was struck by how digital his thinking was. Things were yes or no, right or wrong, black or white. There was no middle, and no gray. Death row doesn’t grant a man very many luxuries, but the opportunity not to have to deal with the subtleties of life was one of them. In all of his communications and in all of his thinking, he was driven to one extreme or the other. He had only a short time to make his soul right with God, make peace with others, and settle his affairs. Time was not on his side, and he had no patience with half measures. 

Unless he was a great actor, his conversion to Christianity was real. He talked at length, and with obvious knowledge, about the Lord and his hope of salvation. He apparently spent a great deal of time in his cell studying the Bible and talking to the prison chaplain. He was not worried about dying. For him, death was immeasurably preferable to living another forty or fifty years with no hope of being free. His life was a constant agony, and he wanted to be free from the pain one way or another. He wanted to either be with the Lord, or to have the hope of one day being a free man in society; but he could not deal with the dreaded Life Without Parole. He was worried about his mother and the rest of his family. He was afraid that his death would kill his mother, that the stigma of being related to an executed murderer would follow his family, and that they would all wrestle with guilt that it was somehow their fault. For himself, he had not one little concern. He was happy and upbeat the entire time I spoke with him.