The executioner who has had a change of heart
Ex-prison warder who put 62 inmates to death tells abolitionists he now opposes the penalty
As the executioner for the US state of Virginia, Jerry Givens put to death 62 people, but after he ended up in jail himself for a crime he says he did not commit, he has become an outspoken opponent of capital punishment.
The 60-year-old African-American worked as a correctional officer between 1974 and 1999, when he was charged with money laundering and perjury and forced to resign.
"In 17 of those 25 years I executed 62 people, I executed 37 by electrocution and 25 by lethal injection," he said, his voice trembling with emotion, on the sidelines of the four-day World Congress against the Death Penalty in Madrid. "It was like a rollercoaster, up and down, because as a correctional officer I prepared inmates to return into society as a productive citizen and as an executioner you take lives."
As the state executioner he would shave the head of convicts facing the death penalty and strap them into Virginia's electric chair or inject them with a lethal mix of drugs.
"We put a cap over your head and send in 3,000 volts to your body, that is gross," Givens said.
He said when he was an executioner he had felt "that person does not deserve to live". "I didn't take full responsibility of this guy being there, I shifted back to the judge, the jury, the family members and himself. I didn't take the whole burden on myself."