Another Night, Another Death

Ernest Johnson was executed by the state of Missouri last night. His killing was carried out by lethal injection at Eastern Reception, Diagnostic & Correctional Center, right here where I'm confined. While someone in a small room administered an intravenous poison to Johnson's body, the dining hall served the prison population barbecue pork and a baked potato.

The recreation building was closed for the occasion, so I didn't go to work in the afternoon or evening. The same went for the library. Factory workers had their usual hours. The rumor was that everyone would lock down for the 4:30 afternoon count, as usual, then not be allowed out until morning, once the body of Ernest Johnson was good and cold.

The previous Missouri execution took place in May of 2020. ERDCC wasn't locked down then, but in the years before I got here, lockdowns on execution nights were de rigueur, as if to emphasize the fucked-upedness of the circumstances. You'd think that someone running a prison would want to de-emphasize the occasion – if not distracting the institution's population by showing a good movie, at least not eliminating all recreational opportunities.

In the hours before the execution, many prisoners in my wing grumbled about losing rec, as well as about the twin possibilities of a lockdown and a dinner of PB & J. My cellmate started to complain; I shut him down. A guy's dying! Neither cell confinement nor a brown-bag meal bore out, but that isn't the point.

I could go on a tangent about the circuitous logic of killing someone to show that killing is wrong. I won't. Nor will I weigh in on the constitutionality of executing a mentally deficient person. What astonishes me is the concern that these executions engender among those here. No one gave a tinker's fart for Johnson, of course, they just didn't want to lose crucial chess-playing hours. I want to ask where our heads are. More urgently, I want to know where are our hearts.