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by Hannah Stephenson It's not many women who'd actively track down former Death Row inmates - but that's exactly what mother-of-two Joan Cheever did, for her new book Back From The Dead. She opens up about her experiences. Few can imagine what it's like to watch an execution, to witness a person taking their last breath at the hands of another human being.
It's a nightmare that lawyer Joan Cheever would not want to repeat. But in 1994 she watched her client, Walter Williams, who had been on Texas' Death Row for 13 years, die after being administered a lethal injection. The grisly process, from feeding the poison into his veins to his death, took six minutes. To Joan, it seemed like a lifetime. She was standing just 5ft away, only a glass screen separating them. "It was very surreal. It was like being in a B-movie. I could see myself reflected in the glass. I felt helpless, knowing you have to maintain some kind of dignity. It's so wrong to be watching a murder. "The people behind me were journalists. You could hear the scratching of pens. Then the dignitaries who'd worked so hard to make sure he was executed were in the back row. It was a weird collection of people. "I was worried the victim's family would be there and nobody would be there for Walter, but they didn't allow the family in." Williams was 19 when he and an accomplice walked into a convenience store high on drugs and alcohol and shot the cashier, who he knew, in cold blood, before the victim had a chance to open the till. Joan, who represented Williams for nine years, managed a number of stays of execution, but in 1994 Williams' luck ran out. His death had a profound effect on her. For weeks she wondered what would have happened if he had ever been released. Would he have killed again or could he have been rehabilitated?
"Your mind plays funny games with you. It's not until several weeks or months after the event you realise you are reliving it." At the time, Joan had a toddler and a baby and was working full time on a law publication, but at midnight every Tuesday - the hour and day that the execution took place - she would wake up and watch the clock until 12.21am, when the horrific event was over. She thought the answer to her question about Williams died with him until she discovered that in 1972 a group of nearly 600 killers and rapists escaped Death Row when the death penalty in the US was fleetingly abolished, to be reinstated in 1976. More than 300 prisoners on Death Row who had their sentences changed to
life imprisonment in 1972 served their time, were paroled and have been
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