Jim Willet, for­mer war­den of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s Walls Unit where Texas exe­cu­tions take place, recent­ly described his expe­ri­ences to the Dallas Observer as emo­tion­al­ly dif­fi­cult for him. As war­den dur­ing 1998 – 2001, three of the busiest years for Texas’ death cham­ber, Willet over­saw 89 exe­cu­tions.

​“The first time is unbe­liev­able,” he told the Observer. ​“You have this healthy per­son – this per­son who was able to just jump up on the gur­ney – and you’ve said, ​‘Kill this per­son,’ and some­one’s fix­in’ to. You’re about to put some­one to death in front of all these peo­ple. It’s an over­whelm­ing feel­ing. I can’t describe it.”

When asked whether he believed that any of the 89 exe­cut­ed inmates may have been inno­cent, Willett stat­ed, ​“I would hope not, with all of the appeals, the process that takes years and the judges and every­body look­ing at it…. But I’m also clear that you’re going to have mis­takes if humans are mess­ing with it – it’s just a fact.”

Jim Willett kept jour­nals of the exe­cu­tions he presided over, and some entries were used in a book called Warden: Prison Life and Death From the Inside Out. Willett and the staff of the Walls Unit also par­tic­i­pat­ed in Witness to an Execution, a National Public Radio doc­u­men­tary that won a Peabody Award.

Texas, like oth­er states with the death penal­ty, appears to be in a de fac­to mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions due to the upcom­ing Supreme Court case of Baze v. Rees in which two Kentucky inmates are chal­leng­ing the states’ lethal injec­tion pro­to­col. If the mora­to­ri­um con­tin­ues, Willett would not oppose it. However, he stat­ed, ​“I do won­der some­times, the peo­ple who are guilty of real vio­lent mur­ders or crimes against chil­dren, why do they deserve to live?” he says. ​“But maybe we don’t have the right to ask that – I don’t know. For me, it’s up to the peo­ple of Texas, what­ev­er they want to do. If they said, ​‘Let’s not have exe­cu­tions,’ I’d be fine with that.”
(“Former Warden Reconsiders Executions” by Megan Feldman, Dallas Observer). See also New Voices and Executions.

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