June 26, 2024, was an execution day here at the Huntsville Unit in east Texas.
One of the few people at my facility who seemed to appreciate the significance of the day was my laundry co-worker Larry. That’s because Larry also tends the death house garden in his role as assistant death house caretaker. He mows the lush lawn and maintains the flowers. Larry loves the large garden, where he says it doesn’t feel like prison.
The garden is one of the last things a person sees before he is taken to his execution.
In the week leading up to the execution day, Larry spent more time inside the death house, buffing the floors and making everything exceptionally clean.
Larry will most likely take over when the current caretaker, David, is transferred to Polunsky Unit more than 60 miles away.
David was on death row, but his death sentence was commuted to a life sentence in 1992. Recently, two of the seven parole members voted to grant him parole. Because of that support, David told me, he wakes up every day feeling like he owes it to others to help them. At Polunsky, he hopes to counsel the men on death row.
The closest I’ve gotten to the death house is probably 50 feet, when I was inside the East Building putting jackets and blankets away in summer storage as part of my laundry job. I have never seen the chamber with my own eyes. I’ve been told that the room is very small and kept very clean.
When I walked outside on execution day, I noticed the recreational yard had been power-washed. The volleyball net had been taken down because the yard was turned into a parking lot for people attending the execution.
At lunch, people acted like they do on a normal day. We had chicken tacos with jalapeños and plenty of cheese sauce. The food on execution days varies from standard quality and quantity to exceptional quality — like a Christmas feast. This day it was the latter. The food was not undercooked, and it was seasoned properly. I was also served a giant 6-ounce serving of pudding instead of the usual 2 ounces.
During the noon count time, only 40 people on the unit were at work. Everyone else had the day off or had already finished. I could have taken the day off from my laundry job, but I didn’t need to. There was not much for me to do, anyway.
Dinner was distributed at 1:30 p.m. — grab-and-go paper trays with beef and dirty rice. I could tell that many people had not picked up their meal; the trash can in my wing only contained a few paper trays. They probably didn’t know dinner was served early that day because of the execution.
At 3:10 p.m., guards opened the doors to our cells to have us step out while they did count again. On a nearby TV, the movie “Assassin’s Creed” was playing. Incredibly, the movie opens with a scheduled execution set at my Texas prison.
About an hour after I fell asleep that evening, the man in the death house received a lethal dose of pentobarbital. His name was Ramiro Gonzales.
