Spared at the ​“Last Minute”: A Form of Psychological Torture?

Tremane Wood was sched­uled to die at 10 a.m. local time on November 13. According to jour­nal­ist Hilary Andersson, who trav­eled to Oklahoma to observe the exe­cu­tion, the call from the gov­er­nor came at 9:59 a.m. Mr. Wood learned that his life would be spared at the lit­er­al ​“last minute.” 

While Mr. Wood, his attor­neys, and his fam­i­ly expe­ri­enced over­whelm­ing relief in the after­math of the clemen­cy grant, accord­ing to Ms. Andersson, some also expressed shock at the tim­ing of the deci­sion. Mr. Wood’s son Brendan, an active-duty Army sol­dier, had dri­ven 18 hours from Fort Bragg to say good­bye to his father. Brendan sat ​“bolt upright, his voice crack­ing and tears stream­ing down his face,” Ms. Andersson wrote. ​“I think there needs to be pos­si­bly some pre­cau­tion in place, maybe even a bill that pre­vents last-sec­ond deci­sions like this,” Brendan told her. ​“I believe that a per­son whole­heart­ed­ly think­ing that they are about to take their last breath, and it com­ing down to sec­onds, min­utes before the deci­sion is made…I think it is cru­el and inhu­mane, men­tal tor­ture because at that point they are try­ing to find their peace and find a place where they aren’t going to go out in anguish.”

Federal law, U.S. mil­i­tary pol­i­cy, and inter­na­tion­al human rights law all ban ​“mock” or ​“sham” exe­cu­tions, clas­si­fy­ing them as a form of tor­ture. In a mock exe­cu­tion, offi­cials pre­pare for or sim­u­late a killing, such as fir­ing a weapon next to an individual’s head or bring­ing them to an exe­cu­tion cham­ber, in order to make the indi­vid­ual believe they are about to die. Legal schol­ar John Bessler has argued that aspects of the American death penal­ty sys­tem amount to tor­tur­ous mock exe­cu­tions because a cap­i­tal pris­on­er is repeat­ed­ly giv­en an ​“aware­ness of [his] impend­ing death and a help­less­ness to pre­vent it.” ​“To date, the Supreme Court has been nar­row­ly focused on whether exe­cu­tions car­ry a risk of excru­ci­at­ing phys­i­cal pain at the very moment of an inmate’s death,” Professor Bessler wrote in a 2018 law review arti­cle. ​“That nar­row focus, how­ev­er, total­ly ignores the severe psy­cho­log­i­cal tor­ment asso­ci­at­ed with con­fine­ment on death row and that asso­ci­at­ed with death sen­tences and executions.”

Observers have not­ed par­al­lels between mock exe­cu­tions and stays of exe­cu­tion. After prepar­ing to face his own death, a pris­on­er may expe­ri­ence not only immense relief, but seri­ous psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­tress when the exe­cu­tion does not pro­ceed. This dis­tress may be greater the clos­er the pris­on­er came to death. Stays have been grant­ed when pris­on­ers were already in the exe­cu­tion cham­ber and had nee­dles insert­ed in their arms. 

Richard Glossip ate a ​“last meal” on three dif­fer­ent occa­sions; he did so twice in the same month, September 2015, only for Oklahoma to halt his exe­cu­tion both times due to a lack of prop­er lethal injec­tion drugs. His attor­ney Don Knight told NPR at the time that ​“repeat­ed­ly pulling his client back from the cusp of death at the last minute is cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment.” ​“When you see tor­ture, is it tor­ture? It looks like tor­ture,” Mr. Knight com­ment­ed. The Supreme Court ordered a new tri­al for Mr. Glossip on February 25 this year based on prosecutorial misconduct. 

The Court also ruled in favor of Ruben Gutierrez this year on a pro­ce­dur­al ques­tion relat­ed to his quest for DNA test­ing, after grant­i­ng a stay of exe­cu­tion last sum­mer just 20 min­utes before he was sched­uled to die. Mr. Gutierrez was about to be led to Texas’ exe­cu­tion cham­ber when he heard the news. ​“He was vis­i­bly emo­tion­al,” said prison spokes­woman Amanda Hernandez. ​“He turned around to the back of the cell, cov­ered his mouth. He was tear­ing up, speech­less. He was shocked.” Like Mr. Glossip, this was not Mr. Gutierrez’s first time prepar­ing for death: the Supreme Court had ear­li­er grant­ed him a stay an hour before he was sched­uled to die in 2020.

Likewise, the Equal Justice Initiative has sug­gest­ed that a botched exe­cu­tion may amount to tor­ture when a pris­on­er sur­vives, not only because of poten­tial phys­i­cal pain, but because of the psy­cho­log­i­cal sim­i­lar­i­ties to a mock exe­cu­tion. ​“Most peo­ple can’t pos­si­bly imag­ine the agony of being cred­i­bly told that on this date, at this hour you will be killed, only to go through the process of an exe­cu­tion and be phys­i­cal­ly abused before being sent back to your cell,” said EJI Executive Director Bryan Stevenson. In 2022, Kenneth Smith laid on a gur­ney for hours while Alabama offi­cials stabbed him with nee­dles in an attempt to find a vein. After the failed attempt, he was diag­nosed with PTSD, vom­it­ed fre­quent­ly, and stopped sleep­ing due to night­mares of being tak­en back to the death cham­ber. Mr. Smith argued that a sec­ond exe­cu­tion attempt would be uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly cru­el and unusu­al, but Alabama exe­cut­ed him by nitro­gen gas in 2024. 

Mr. Wood’s clemen­cy grant appears to be one of the ​“lat­est” in recent mem­o­ry, pos­si­bly in the entire mod­ern era of the death penal­ty. Others receiv­ing clemen­cy short­ly before their sched­uled exe­cu­tions include Julius Jones (four hours, Oklahoma, 2021), Jimmy Meders (six hours, Georgia, 2020), and Thomas ​“Bart” Whitaker (less than one hour, Texas, 2018). Mr. Wood ​“had men­tal­ly worked him­self up to face the end, to go in there and be strapped to the table and exe­cut­ed,” said his lawyer Amanda Bass Castro Alves. When told he got clemen­cy, ​“he just col­lapsed on to the floor, just lit­er­al­ly col­lapsed. The pres­sure that he was under being lift­ed just took every­thing out of him.” 

Just a few hours after learn­ing his life was spared, Mr. Wood was found ​“unre­spon­sive” in his new cell. He was rushed to the hos­pi­tal, where doc­tors deter­mined he was suf­fer­ing from ​“dehy­dra­tion and stress.” Mr. Wood said that he wasn’t sure what hap­pened, but he believed he had fall­en off his bunk and lost con­scious­ness after not hav­ing any­thing to eat or drink since his ​“last meal” the night before.

Given the trou­bling cir­cum­stances of Mr. Wood’s case, the grant of clemen­cy by Governor Kevin Stitt, despite the last-minute tim­ing, was a deci­sion that many call ​“coura­geous and cor­rect.” Clemency has long been called the ​“fail-safe” of the death penal­ty sys­tem, and recent polls show that clemen­cy is increas­ing­ly polit­i­cal­ly pop­u­lar.