Six Hours in Carson City

Carson City

March 26, 2004

It's dark and cold, this prison of cinderblock walls, and death lurks around the perimeter, slipping across the nearby field dotted with llamas and cows, clinging to the high fencing and razor wire. Rusty stairs descend from the Nevada State Prison's flat roof, just feet away from the witness room, where a crowd will watch a man die tonight. Media gather in the parking lot at 3 o'clock this Friday afternoon, under the blue sky interrupted by light gray clouds, and wait. Small black birds cluster inside the looming, metal fence that surrounds the prison, flaunting their freedom by choosing to stay within bounds. There's a gothic feel to the scene, like we've stepped out of Carson City and into a horror movie. A chill cuts through the 50-degree air, and a strong, cold wind blows waves through the long, dry grass surrounding the compound.

The execution of Lawrence Colwell Jr. is hours away, but news vans have already set up camp. There are four vans, five reporters and a handful of cameramen shuffling around, waiting. A reporter stands in front of the prison, motioning behind him, talking to the camera about the coming death of a man who, in 1994, at age 24, killed Las Vegas tourist Frank Rosenstock, who was a Florida retiree, strangled the 76-year-old with a belt, and stole $91. He pleaded guilty to murder, and in his 1995 sentencing hearing, Colwell represented himself. He told a three-judge panel, "I took his life for no reason. No reason at all. It wasn't for the money. It was for the kicks of it, I guess." He was sentenced to death.

In 2002 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that juries, not judges, should hand out the death penalty. Still, Colwell lost two state Supreme Court appeals, one in 1996 and one in 2002, at which point he waived his right to appeal, clearing the obstacles to his execution. He said he was "99.99 percent" certain he was going to go through with the execution. If he does, he'll be the first man in Nevada to be executed since 2001.

Department of Corrections Spokesman Fritz Schlottman comes down from the prison and meets with me in a small guard tower. He says Colwell has been moved from a segregation area into a "last-night" cell, where he will remain with six security guards until the execution.

"I spoke to him this morning, and we talked about how he was doing and how his mental situation was at that time," Schlottman says. "He was rather quiet this morning, rather than the other days, when he was quite talkative."

"Are you thinking he's going to change his mind?" I ask. Colwell can still appeal the execution, and some wonder if he'll have an 11th hour change of heart.

"I'm not a psychologist," says Schlottman. "I don't know."

Colwell is given his last meal: a grilled, well-done cheeseburger with onions, pickle and tomatoes, french fries, and three slices of cheese and pepperoni pizza, soda, water, a banana, apple and orange, and three pints of ice cream—vanilla, chocolate and vanilla-chocolate. His mood remains sullen and withdrawn, says Schlottman. He's offered sedatives by prison staff, but refuses. He spends his time smoking cigarettes, watching television and meets with his mother and father and his lawyer. He's turned down his exercise-yard privileges.

Guards are posted at both entrances to the prison parking lot and won't allow anyone in but the names on a list. I ask whether they're expecting protesters tonight. They say they don't know what to expect—this is their first execution. At that, I make small talk, asking how long they've been working here, chattering about the cold weather, wondering whether the state will really go through with it. And they abruptly tell me they don't want to speak with me—about anything. A few minutes later, another guard approaches a photographer and reprimands him for taking pictures that include any of the prison staff. He stands there, making gruff comments, while the photographer deletes the pictures. Nobody wants to be associated with this event.

It's dark, and the temperatures have dropped to the low 30s. A reporter sighs before resigning to enter the portable toilet. Another reclines his seat in the warmth of his vehicle, settling in for a long evening. From the parking lot we can see the lights from two small, rectangular windows on the edge of the prison. This is the witness room, which will host eight official witnesses and 10 members of the media as the last of Colwell's life is taken. I'm not one of them.

The media cluster among the news vans talking with Schlottman. He's telling a couple of us about a "secret code word" that's given to a judge, the attorney general and the defense attorney. If anything should happen to change the scheduled execution, they have to use the secret code word to verify the change is official. But it's not a code-word that will be used to stop the execution. To get a stay, all Colwell has to do is say "stop." Before Schlottman can elaborate on what changes would inspire use of the secret code word, a guard approaches and tells the spokesman he has a phone call. The media gets frantic. "No phone calls," one reporter says as the prison flack walks away. "We don't want a reprieve," says another.

A tall, brawny man arrives carrying a sign. He parks across the street from the prison, standing on a gravely shoulder of the road, sign blowing in the wind, with the small skyline of Carson City in the background. "Nevada is the Old West. Hang him high!" reads the white poster. On the other side: "Adios, Lawrence, enjoy the ride!"

He's smiling. This is a good day. "I think more people ought to be executed, because I think the death penalty and execution protects future victims," says Chris Daugherty, a retired Vietnam veteran who lives in Carson City. "In other words, if you kill the guy, he can't kill anybody else." A car drives by and a man screams out the window "That's right! Hang the motherf--ker! Prick! Kill him!" Daugherty smiles in solidarity.

"Are you going do anything particular at 9 o'clock?" I ask.

"Probably just cheer," he says.

"You're going to stay out here till he's done?"

"Yeah. Till he's done."

More than 40 men and women have arrived, bundled in jackets, blankets and shawls, carrying candles and signs: "Killing is not the answer." "Jesus was executed. What would he say?" "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." They top a milk crate with candles and light them. As the wind continues extinguishing the flames, they set out two large flashlights, beaming skyward. The group is led by Rev. Chuck Durante, co-chair of the Life, Peace and Justice Commission of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Reno. They pray, read the list of the nine others who have been executed since 1977 and sing "We Shall Overcome" and "Give Peace to Every Heart."

A car drives past, horn blaring. "Kill the bastard!" a man screams. The protesters keep singing.

A 3-year-old boy with a red nose and rosy cheeks, bundled in a heavy jacket and three hats, sits on his father's shoulders, gazing at the candles. I talk to his father, Rene Botello of Reno, about what his son understands about tonight.

"He knows that a man made a very bad, bad, bad choice, and now he's going to suffer the same way," Botello says, talking to me as though I'm the 3-year-old. "We tell our son that to hit back when you're hit, it just keeps the anger alive. Right, Joshua? Would you say that we don't hit people, right?"

"We don't hit people," he says.

"So if someone hits you, you don't hit them back?" I ask.

"Yes," Joshua says softly.

"Nooo, we don't," his father says, gently.

A group of men and women dressed in suits have gathered at the guard station. They're the personal and official witnesses and are whisked into the prison. Schlottman comes down to say that Colwell has written a note to his lawyers. "The attorneys have received a letter from him," the prison spokesman says. "The attorneys have opened the letter and whatever was in the letter was not a request for a stay. So we don't know what's in the letter, but right now we're going forth."

The 10 members of the media who will witness the execution are led from the guard tower to the prison. They're patted down and taken to the witness room, joining Attorney General Brian Sandoval, Clark County District Attorney David Roger and others. Frank Rosenstock's children are witnesses, but they're separated from the media. Colwell's parents are said to be somewhere in the prison, but won't watch the execution. From the parking lot, I can see shadows moving eerily across the yellow light of the witness room windows.

A television has been placed near the Channel 8 van, and I walk towards it to see if there's been any update I've missed. The guards yell at me for walking in the driveway towards the prison. They're getting edgy.

A car drives by, honking. No profanities this time. The protesters' eyes are watering, and their noses are running from the cold, but they carry on, some hugging one another for warmth, others retreating to their cars for a few cherished moments of defrosting. There are old hippies and fresh faces; a man with a cane and an old woman who closes her eyes while singing, and sways like the wind is going to blow her over. It's in the mid- to upper-20s now, and my pens have frozen. I'm carving my notes with a shaking hand.

Lisa Stiller is one of the shivering protesters, dressed in multiple layers, glancing from the candles up to the prison. As 9 o'clock approaches, she says there's a sense of good and bad that will come with the execution.

"It's bad in the sense that it's getting closer to his death, and to the time when he's going to be running out of appeals. I think the good sense is it's over, there's closure and peace. We're sitting here hanging on, when's it going to be over? And you get this tension. It'll be over, and hopefully someone will be at peace. I don't know."

Though I'm not present, the following events were recounted to me by KLAS Channel 8 reporter Atle Erlingsson and others who were.

The media chat with the official witnesses in a room that looks into the old gas chamber. Though gas hasn't been used since 1979, this is where executions still take place.

At 8:52, the chamber door opens. Silence stifles the room, and nothing will be heard for the next 18 minutes. The light in the chamber is bright, but the witness room is dim. A staged feeling lingers in the air, like they're watching a show or an exhibit in a museum. Colwell enters and the seriousness sets in. He's handcuffed, his eyes are cast down and he's surrounded by five prison guards dressed entirely in black, black tape covering their name tags. Faces freeze. A man is about to die.

They've lit two candles. One for Rosenstock and one for Colwell. It's 9 o'clock. They observe a moment of silence. One of the candles blows out, almost immediately. Below, two candles sit on a posterboard that says "Killing is not the answer." It almost seems symbolic as the wind blows them over, too.

Colwell's eyes are half-open, and he's steadied by two guards, each holding one arm. He lays down on the bed, closes his eyes. The guards strap him in. Chest. Wrists. Legs. Ankles. Four of the guards leave, and one walks around ensuring the straps were tight, ensuring that the ankle and wrist restraints were locked. As he leaves, the beige blinds are shut. All that can be seen is the blue glove of a doctor, inserting an IV and attaching a heart monitor.

The blinds open. Colwell's hooked up to the machine that will end his life. His eyes are shut. His chest and stomach move up and down, rapidly. A volunteer in another room presses the button. Three drugs flow into Colwell's veins, one after another. The first is an anesthetic that puts him to sleep. The second stops his breathing. After five to 10 seconds, Colwell's chest stills. His lips puff, and he exhales his last breath. The third fluid stops his heart.

The room is silent. The witnesses stare. A physician walks in, checks Colwell's pupils, listens to his heart with a stethoscope, and at 9:08 pronounces him dead. A security guard opens the door and escorts the witnesses from the prison, as Colwell's body is transferred to a van and taken off to be cremated.

The Rev. Durante speaks to the protesters. "Another act of violence concludes. Let us pray." The mood is somber as they sing "Amazing Grace." It's a song that they don't usually sing at an execution, but they selected it tonight because Colwell recently converted to Catholicism. "He experienced, himself, quite a conversion from being one who didn't care about what he had done, he described killing was like flipping a light switch, to being one who embraced a faith, who recognized a terrible, terrible wrong, and who every day would read a letter that the family of Frank Rosenstock had written, I believe for the penalty phase, and prayed for the family and prayed about what he had done. He truly experienced a conversion."

I look down the road to where the "Hang him high" guy was standing. He's gone.

The media shuffle out of the prison and gather behind a barricade, waiting for the prison director to make a statement. TV guys immediately begin reporting what they'd witnessed. A print reporter is on his cell phone, calling in the information. "Hoisted on gurney … wearing jeans, blue cotton shirt, black shoes. … No, they're not new, the soles were worn down." Mostly, they stand alone, looking deep in thought, digesting what they've witnessed. A TV reporter from Reno looks shocked. Not by the horrors of it—by the seeming humanity. The boring, anticlimactic humanity. "It was like watching grass grow," he says, in disbelief. "He was completely expressionless. It was like, nothing. Nothing."

Erlingsson describes the experience as eerie. "You're in this very stale environment surrounded by bricks and looking at this old chamber. It makes it that much more dramatic."

Jackie Crawford, director of the Nevada Department of Corrections, delivers a statement, saying Colwell expired at 9:08, and he had no final statement, showed no remorse and said nothing about the victim. "To be very honest, sometimes these people become very tired, very weary of being incarcerated," Crawford reasons.

"Kill the bastard!" a motorist whoops from the road again, too late.

Rosenstock's son, Terry, also makes a statement on behalf of himself and his sister, Mindy Dinburg. They feel that justice has been served, he says, but that the execution has made them relive the horror of his murder.

"We have been asked if the execution brings closure to our family, and the answer is no," Rosenstock reads from his prepared statement. "We see today as just the end of another painful chapter in a story we wish had never been written."

Colwell was the 10th person to die in Nevada since the state Legislature reinstated the death penalty in 1977. He's the ninth person to waive his right to appeal, choosing death. The next execution date will be set in coming months: 57-year-old Terry J. Dennis, who confessed to strangling a woman in Reno in 1999, has waived his appeals and says he's ready to die.