Death row worker shares ‘worst thing I’ve ever experienced’ while working there that's stayed with him years later
A former death row worker has opened up about the ‘worst thing he's ever experienced’ on the job.
Death penalty opponent Bill Breeden - who served as a spiritual advisor to inmates on death row - witnessed his first live execution in 2021.
The 74-year-old from the US was working as a Unitarian Universalist minister when Corey Johnson, a prisoner at Terre Haute penitentiary in Indiana, stepped up to the electric chair.
Johnson was responsible for the murders of seven people in 1992 and had been in solitary confinement for his crimes for nearly 30 years.
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Breeden told The Times: "He couldn’t read or write, but he was just an amazing man.
"He was called the gentle giant by everyone on death row because nobody had heard him raise his voice."
The shock came when 'the victims’ family, as soon as his death was announced, stood up and they were cheering like at a football game'.
"It was grotesque," he recalled, adding: "But in the perpetrator’s room was Corey’s family, who’d not seen him in 29 years.
"I’d raised $7,000 to bring his family to see him and his brother just stood up and started screaming ‘I love you, bro’ over and over as Corey died.
"It was the worst thing I’ve ever experienced.
"Nobody is made to stand and watch a murder."
The outlet also spoke to Ron McAndrew, 85, who was responsible for the execution of eight men from 1996 to 1998.
The former warden at Florida State Prison recalled the botched execution of Pedro Medina in March 1997, which gave him 'a lot of nightmares'.
Botched executions are 'those involving unanticipated problems or delays that caused, at least arguably, unnecessary agony for the prisoner or that reflect gross incompetence of the executioner', according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Medina was executed in Florida for the murder of a 52-year-old woman in Orlando.
However, during his execution via electrocution, Medina's head burst into flames and filled the death chamber with smoke.
McAndrew said: "We burnt him to death. There was a sudden large flame that came right up in my face and then Pedro’s head was literally on fire.
"There was no way I could stop the execution at that point. It was horrifying and something I’ll never forget.
"By the time I left the prison system, I had started drinking a lot in order to sleep as I was having a lot of nightmares. I was buying Scotch by the case."
Anish Vij