Allen Ault: Opposing the death penalty

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0:59What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker. Today's programme is from our archives and it examines the idea of freedom, how it's achieved and how it is taken away. Speaking to me in 2014 on a visit to London, my guest had a special insight into the ultimate denial of freedom, that is, state-sanctioned execution. Alan Ault was, during the 1990s, the head of corrections in the American state of Georgia. He was responsible for running the machinery of death.

1:47Mr. Ault didn't just order others to carry out executions. He felt it was his duty to be present as those executions were carried out. But after watching a handful of the state's most serious criminals being strapped into the electric chair, he decided he could stomach it no more. He left his post and became a campaigner against the use of capital punishment in the United States. What prompted that momentous change of heart? and is the death penalty itself doomed to extinction? It's back in the 1990s that you were the Commissioner of Corrections in the US state of Georgia and you were responsible for running the machinery of capital punishment.

2:34Is that experience still with you today? It is still here and I still have nightmares, not every night, but on occasion I still have nightmares about it. It's still a very hard pill to swallow, and it stays in your psyche for, I guess, forever. It's the most premeditated murder possible, but the manual is about that thick, and the preparation that you go through to execute someone. Well, I can tell from your words already that this is seared into your soul, this whole experience. So let us start at the beginning and figure out how on earth you got yourself involved in this element of the corrections business.

3:19Because as I understand it, you were a trained psychologist and you entered the world of corrections, the prison system, believing that you were there to help and to rehabilitate. Yes. So how on earth did you end up running death row and an execution chamber? In the 70s, of course, I'd never been in a prison or jail, but in Georgia, they had a brand new maximum security prison, which was called the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Center. The only problem was that they didn't have a program. And so they hired me to develop a diagnostic and classification system as a psychologist. And they made me superintendent and warden of this institution.

4:02And that was ultimately the institution and the facility that became the chamber of death. Yes, many years later. So, listen, how did you get sucked into a system to the point where, having been a psychologist, having entered the system as somebody committed to rehabilitation, you ended up as the chief who was signing off on and running a system of death? In the early 70s, when I started in corrections, the death penalty was unconstitutional. And then it was later in 74 that Georgia wrote a new law that was determined to be constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. But the actual executions didn't take place until many years later because of appeals.

4:53and the first two that I executed had been on death row 17 years. In fact, they were 17 when they came in and they were 34 when they were executed. Actually, they were different individuals. Let's talk about that case because I think it's important to get very specific here. The 17-year-old that you mentioned, I believe he was called Christopher Berger. Right. He was of limited IQ. I think he scored something like 80 or so on the test, suggesting he was close to being mentally impaired. He also had been abused as a child. Right. He ended up being involved in the kidnap, rape, and murder of a young man.

5:35As you say, he was on death row for 17 years. You got to know him. Yes. I visited, when I was commissioner, I visited death row on several occasions and got to know them. And before this was the first warrant that I had to execute someone, I went down to Jackson, which is about 40 miles from Atlanta, where the central headquarters are. So I talked to him and other people on death row. So it wasn't just a matter of executing somebody that you didn't know. or... You said, I think, that you saw the change in him. Yes. From a very disturbed young man to a man who, by the time he was approaching his end, you describe as being thoughtful and actually contrite.

6:25Yes, very, very contrite. And, you know, to put it in psychological terms, when he committed the act, he didn't even have fully developed frontal lobes, which allowed at you to make decent decisions. He was a juvenile. Yes, he was. And the other individual involved in the crime was also a juvenile. So they were now adults. They had been on death row for 17 years, and they had educated themselves while on death row, and they had received a lot of counseling and other services while they were on death row. So they were different human beings, actually. Christopher Berger's last words to you just before you gave the order for the switch to be pressed were, please forgive me.

7:16Yes. I found out as I executed others, some of them even went on to filibuster. You had to cut them off. I probably would have done that too, but his was very simple. Please forgive me. How did you feel at that moment? It was your responsibility to give the order. Yes, I was standing behind in another room with a glass looking at the back of the electric chair. I was there with the Attorney General for the state of Georgia and we had phones hooked up to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Governor's Office, the Georgia Pardons and Parole Office. And so then when he checked with each of those entities, which might grant a stay or a parole or a commute to sentence.

8:08But when he checked with each of those entities and there was no stay, he indicated that to me. And there was an individual standing behind me who had been my electrician when I was the warden of this institution. I knew him very well. And so when the Attorney General indicated there was no stay, then I asked the individual for his last, if he'd like to give his last words which he said please forgive me and then I turned to Brad and said Brad it's now time and

8:53Brad flipped a switch and we could see the jolt of electricity running through this individual's body and snapped his head back.

9:13And then there was just total silence.

9:21And I knew I had killed another human being. At the very beginning of this interview, you used the word murder. Yes. Do you believe in your heart that you murdered or were involved, complicit in the murder of Christopher Berger? Although it's state-sanctioned, it is, by every definition, it's premeditated murder, probably the most premeditated of any murders. In fact, in most states, executions on the coroner's report is listed as a homicide. So yes, I feel like I was very much involved

10:11in premeditating a man's killing and giving the order for him to be murdered. How much damage has that done to you? Well, we provided psychiatric, psychological help for everybody involved, the officers involved and the warden that was involved. But then I realized that the Attorney General and I were not receiving any treatment, and it just got harder and harder for me. The Attorney General, he handled it by running for governor and talking about being tough on crime, but I don't think he handled it very well. And I finally went and asked for treatment and received some treatment to help me through it.

11:08Help you through what? I mean, did you feel a sense of guilt? A large sense of guilt. At first, I tried to rationalize this whole process that, well, if I could save one human being by this process, then it would be worth it. You mean the idea of the deterrent effect? Deterrent effect. But I already knew. I mean, I had already read the research on deterrent effect. And I had talked to so many inmates, even before we had the death penalty. and rarely do any of the inmates ever think through to the consequences of their actions. So to say that it detours, and there have been some pieces of research that indicated it was a deterrent, but I don't think any reputable research would say that it has been a deterrent.

12:06Even the family of the victim, they were in the institution. I didn't allow them to go into the room where the witnesses were at an execution. Why didn't you allow them? Because I know, I mean, I used to work in the United States. I've covered executions myself. And I know that in many states and many situations, the family of the victims, those who were murdered, and it's almost always a murder, they are invited, if they want, to witness the death, the execution. We invited them to the institution, but not to witness the execution. But there are families who want to be there. They say it adds to their sense of justice being done, their sense of this word that gets used so often, closure.

12:57Well, that is, I've talked to many, and they did not receive the closure that they thought they would. And I didn't want an execution to be revenge or seen as revenge. But after all, that's truly what it, retribution is what it's all about. And was it for you to decide? It was for me to decide. I was responsible, so I decided that the victims would not attend the execution. And we had other witnesses in a witness pool, but not the victim's family. Here is what I find most, perhaps, puzzling about the real honesty with which you describe your feelings in this first execution. You say you didn't actually even then really believe in the deterrent effect, and you clearly had grave doubts about what you were doing.

13:55But you went on. Yes, I did. To supervise the killing of more prisoners. Four after that. How could you do that? How could you live with your conscience? I didn't do it well. I didn't. It was a small part of that job. I had 15 ,000 employees, a billion-dollar budget. You were a top official in the prison system in the United States, but with all due respect, it was not a small part of your job because it was the moment in which you, in a certain sense, were playing God. You were playing with people's lives, and that is no small matter. It certainly is not. And I've spent a lifetime since then regretting every moment and every killing.

14:46five in total. It is perhaps too easy for me to sit here with you and go through cases and ask you difficult questions, but there is one other case that I really must ask you about. That is the black man who was convicted of murdering three women. Now, he was sentenced to die. It became plain in that period between conviction and death that, first of all, there had been a significant racial element within the jury. One juror described an atmosphere of intimidation where the N-word was repeatedly used for that minority of jurors who were black, who were ultimately to decide his fate. There was also evidence that this man was mentally impaired to the point where, frankly, many experts didn't believe he was competent to make a plea.

15:46You still, despite all of that, had him killed. Yes. I was, without trying to excuse myself at all, I was the vehicle for the execution, and I have no defense for that. Why didn't you walk away? I did, but not then. It was too late. Yes. For him it was too late. It was too late, yes. When you were doing the executions, you don't get all the history of what went on in the jury and looking back over it, all that information came out. But you certainly didn't have that type of information. But when you look at the research, black people who kill whites are about three times more likely to receive the death penalty than the other way around.

16:48Certainly it's a racial thing. I've found that in talking to many, many citizens, they usually have a stereotype in the back of their mind that they're frightened of. In the South, that might be a large black rapist, but there's always a racial stereotype involved, usually. And so when you talk about execution, they're killing that stereotype, not the human being that actually is there. And I have many compatriots who were directors who have gone through this execution. I don't know any of them that haven't shed a lot of tears over it You talk about shedding tears is that as far as it goes for you or have you taken from your experience a determination to do something about it?

17:47There's a group of five of us three who were former directors, the other two former wardens One of them was the director in California, one of the director in Ohio. But we have an organization that we work trying to stop executions. And I appeared before several legislative groups trying to abolish the death penalty in several states. So it's been an ongoing type of thing. We've worked on individual cases, most of them not too successful, but I did have success last year with one case of getting it stayed and then commuted the next day. And those are very personal experiences. This individual was a black man who was 6 '9".

18:46He had a good record until he was around 19. and somebody said, I wonder what Daniel would do if he took this blue pill, and they gave him the blue pill, and he just went absolutely berserk for about four hours, stabbed and killed his best friend, and stabbed one other individual who survived. The prosecutor went all out to try him, and he went to death row, and he was there 19 years. As big as he was, he could have been the bully of death row, but he spent the whole 19 years trying to help other people. So I was asked to try to intervene in this case, and I did talk with the parole board, and we gathered affidavits from many of the staff who told how good he was and, I mean, how great he was on death row.

19:45And at the very last moment, about two hours before he was being executed, they stayed the execution. Did in that sense, did that particular campaign for that particular individual, did that seem like some sort of, I don't know, giving back, some sort of payback for what you had done yourself in the past? I think all the things that I do now is try to alleviate the sense of guilt and I've made two movies one for Discovery Channel which was produced and directed by a British firm because they wanted to do a non-political film well I'm sorry but Death Penalty is totally political I want to just talk briefly about politics you said this of politicians that you've had experience of as a director of corrections in the United States.

20:36In the field of corrections, you say politicians play to the base instincts of the electorate. There is an awful lot of grandstanding. Yes. You sound very cynical about politicians on this issue. One North Georgia chicken farmer told me about politics. He said, Alan, I'll do whatever you ask me to do. You want some more money in your budget or you want to change the law? unless it becomes between me and one of my constituents. And he said the name of the game is re-election. And certainly that's our U.S. Congress and that's in most legislatures. And so many of them will tell me we've got to just be tough on crime to our constituents.

21:20But that in a way is the point. You know, in this extraordinary change of heart you've had and journey that you've made, You're missing out one element, are you not? That is, the United States is very proud of its democracy. And every poll in the U.S., to this day, even though the numbers have changed somewhat, shows that a majority, a clear majority of Americans believe in the death penalty as the ultimate deterrent. And as long as that is true, don't politicians have a duty to reflect that? Well, I don't know. They also have a duty to inform their voters, their constituents. And And example, Connecticut, they had a research that was done over four decades by Donahue from Stanford University, a law professor.

22:09And they had every capital case judged by independent judges. Because people thought the most egregious cases were in death row. It turned out that somewhere around 47 or 49 of the most egregious cases, you know, where they'd cause pain or rape or whatever, only one of those cases was actually on death row. When that and some other things, the expense of it is tremendous, the Connecticut legislature last year did away with the death penalty. To end, let's bring it back to you. You wrote not so long ago some very powerful words. You said, no one has the right to ask a public servant to take on a lifelong sentence of nagging doubt, shame, and guilt.

23:02Yes. Is that what you have been sentenced to? Absolutely. Every time I think it's behind me, then something happens and it all comes back with a rush. I was out at the Lexington Airport the morning. I had a 6.05 flight and the 6 o 'clock flight left. By all rights, I'd always been on Delta Airlines. This morning I was going someplace else and was on another airline. and I checked in with all these people and the plane crashed and killed everyone and I had to go again. And all that, all those feelings came back. All those faces came back. All those nightmares came back. And you just have to keep re-dealing with it, re-dealing with it.

24:00Well, Alan Ault, I thank you for sharing your experience with us. Thanks for being on Hard Talk. Thank you.

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25:28Bold startups to establish powerhouses. Poland offers the momentum, resources and reliability you need to take your business further. Poland, where businesses don't just grow, they're built to last. Find out more at polandyourplacetogrow.com. If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story.

26:07What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.