A day in the life of death row
Published in The Record, Hackensack, N.J., on April 26, 1998.
By Seamus McGraw
It's a little before noon, and the dull drone of a dozen small television sets pulses through the second-floor cellblock at the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton. In the bunker-like pantry, an inmate, moved from some remote corner of the prison, heats 14 pre-made meals of burgers and potatoes for 14 people he'll never meet.
In one cell, at the far end of the lower deck, Leslie Ann Nelson, the Camden County transsexual sentenced to death after she murdered two police officers, lies on her bunk, her stiff white sheet pulled over her head.
A few yards away, John Martini, sentenced to death for the murder of Bergen County businessman Irving Flax, pulls himself out of bed with the aid of a walker. In the cell next door, Robert Marshall, the dashing Ocean County insurance salesman whose crime -- arranging to have his wife murdered to collect a $1 million insurance claim -- was detailed in the best-selling book and made-for-TV movie "Blind Faith," hovers near the small window the guards use as a pass-through. There's a sign on the window: "Just undo it."
It's Wednesday. But it could be any day. All days are more or less the same on New Jersey's death row.
There is a renewed focus on the 14 people who spend their days waiting to die. New Jersey's death row is seldom visited by anyone but a handful of guards. But recently, members of a panel headed by former Rep. Dick Zimmer toured the facility.
The panel's goal, Zimmer said, is to recommend changes in state law, the state constitution, and court rules to remove some of the legal obstacles to swift executions and expand the kinds of offenses that would be subject to the death penalty. Panel members include people from both sides of the issue.
No one has yet been executed in New Jersey, largely because of thelengthy appeals process, experts say. Among the things that Zimmer and his panel are likely to recommend are limits to the numbers of appeals.
But Zimmer, who looks at death row and sees just 14 inmates and seven empty cells, also is looking for ways to increase the number of people who are sentenced to death each year.
"The purpose of the committee is to get the public to say to the governor: `Tie up the Supreme Court so that we can start killing people,'" said panel member Cathy Waldor, a defense attorney who has handled several prominent death-penalty cases, including Avi Kostner's.
Kostner avoided execution for the murder of his two children in Teaneck.
So far, the panel has held three public hearings across the state, eliciting often emotional testimony from the families of victims
and law enforcement officials. A final meeting is scheduled for May 8 in Trenton.
The panel's recommendations are due on the governor's desk in August, but Zimmer said last week, "I think we'll beat that deadline."
In the Capital Sentence Unit, life goes on with a kind of numbing regularity.
It's all a matter of routine. Nine guards _ three men per shift, three shifts a day _ spend eight hours a day in close contact with death-row inmates. They wake the sleeping prisoners and make sure they're all accounted for, said Corrections Officer Craven Richardson.
They pass out the prisoners' breakfasts of eggs and toast. When Nelson wants to shower -- the inmates are permitted to shower every other day -- it's up to the guards to make sure that a hospital screen is placed between her cell and the others.
Nelson, who had a sex-change operation in 1993, is the only woman on New Jersey's death row. "The screen gives her a little privacy,"said Roy Hendricks, the prison's associate administrator.
After breakfast, the prisoners are allowed to spend a little time -- an hour or two -- in what the guards call "modular recreation."
They're led from their 8-by-10-foot cells to a dull beige cage, about 25 feet long and 20 feet wide. Inside, there are a handful of small metal tables. On one of the tables, there's a cheap plastic chess set. That's where Marshall -- who has fought longer than anyone to avoid the death penalty -- and Martini, who is demanding that his own execution be hurried, face off in regular games, Richardson said.
There's a little bit of ego in the games. "This one says he's better. That one says he is," Richardson said. But in the years the two men have been playing, neither has regularly prevailed.
The men who guard the death-row inmates don't talk much about capital punishment. They don't spend a lot of time discussing the moral ramifications of state executions. So far, they haven't had much need.
Although New Jersey reinstated the death penalty in 1982, no condemned prisoner has been executed since then in the state. It is one of nine states, including New York and Connecticut, that never has executed a prisoner on death row since the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for reinstitution of the penalty in the late 1970s.
In the 16 years since the death penalty was restored in this state, several New Jersey inmates have had their sentences overturned andothers remain locked in lengthy appeals processes.
Marshall, for example, who has been on death row since 1985, filed a federal lawsuit late last year seeking a new trial. The case is still pending.
It's a costly process. Though hard figures are not available, experts estimate that it costs more than $1 million to represent a condemned inmate through various levels of appeals, and slightly less to prosecute him or her. But in New Jersey, where death-row inmates are represented by the state's public defender, taxpayers foot the bill for lawyers on both sides.
Even Martini, who has demanded that the appeals process be stopped, has spent nearly eight years on death row. It costs $33,000 a year to house and feed a prisoner in the unit - an isolated cellblock where even the window on the door is covered with cardboard painted the color of dried blood to keep the curious from peering inside. That's about 20 percent higher than the cost of housing an inmate in the general population, the state Department of Corrections says.
Marilyn Flax, who was made a widow by Martini, echoes the sentiments of others who have waited for what they see as justice: "I'm frustrated; my life has been in limbo.
"I just pray that he doesn't die of natural causes."
The guards -- and the prisoners -- know there is growing sentiment, at least among politicians and the families of victims, to speed up the executions. The guards say they try not to dwell on the thought that one day, perhaps soon, some of the prisoners they've been feeding and supervising may well leave the block for good. They will be led from their cells to the elevator that will take them to the first floor of the sprawling prison complex, where they will be led down a narrow corridor to a room the size of a closet. In each case, the inmate will be strapped to a gurney no larger than a small camp cot, and a fatal concoction of drugs will be pumped into his or her arm while a handful of dignitaries and other invited guests sit in an adjacent 12-by-15-foot cinder-block room watching the proceedings through a one-way mirror.
When it happens, the death-row guards won't have to watch it. They will not be part of the execution detail, Hendricks said.
"That would be too much to ask," he said.
Richardson agreed: "Our job is security and supervision," he said. "It's a job."
It's not like any other job.
Death row has always been a closed world. Set off from the rest of the 1,876 prisoners, death-row inmates are allowed to speak to visitors only by telephone from small cages. They are separated from theirguests by a thick piece of glass. Contact visits, available to other prisoners, are not permitted.
But it's really academic, said Corrections Officer William Martin.
They "don't get many visitors anyway," he said. Their human contact is with each other and with the guards, and that contact takes place as part of a monotonous, unchangeable routine.
They sleep, they wake, they watch television. On alternate days, the death-row inmates are allowed into the prison yard, where they can jog or play basketball for an hour. Even then, they are isolated from the rest of the population. All other prisoners must be cleared from the yard before the death-row inmates are allowed outside.
Sometimes, if they choose, they read. In the corner of the unit, there's a three-shelf bookcase with an assortment of old romance novels and a few dogeared magazines. There's Life, a fishing magazine, and an old copy of U.S. News and
World Report with a picture of an infant dressed in prison stripes under the headline: "Born Bad." The mail tag on that one was addressed to Robert Marshall, care of New Jersey State Prison.
Depression is common, Richardson said, and life on death row is tedious. There are seldom any flare-ups among prisoners, but there have been some minor problems, prison officials concede. In September, for example, Jesse Timmendequas, the man convicted of raping and killing 7-year-old Megan Kanka in Hamilton Township four years ago, claimed that he was being harassed by condemned cop-killer Robert "Mudman" Simon, a hulking, bearded biker.
There was no physical violence, and Timmendequas now spends almost all his time huddled on his cot, his head and body covered by his prison-issued blanket, the guards say.
So do most of the inmates. That was one of the things that struck Zimmer when he made his recent tour. "It was the middle of the day," he said. "They were all in bed."
Although they have tiny windows in their stark cells, they seldom bother to look outside, the guards say. The televisions, 13-inch sets they pay for themselves, are their windows to the world.
From time to time, of course, they do chat with the officers, and relationships do develop, Martin says. The guards have heard Martini talking about his bad teeth, and it was up to them to get him on the list to receive dentures. They've talked to him about his bad hips and his stomach problems. But more than anything else, the guards know that Martini wants to die.
He may get his wish.
For Martin -- a 17-year veteran of the Corrections Department who actively sought a job on death row so he would have tried every job inside the prison -- that thought has raised some concerns. Although he usually puts the thought out of his mind, there are times when he wonders what will happen when the first inmate is executed.
"I'm sure it'll be strange, coming in one day and not seeing a guy who you've seen eight hours a day, five days a week," Martin said.
"But the way I see it, sometimes some people have to die so other people can live. I really believe that."
In that, he echoes the sentiments of Marilyn Flax. "My husband is in the grave. . . . John Martini admitted killing him. He wants to die. Why don't we let him have his wish?"