The Last Face You'll Ever See: The Private Life of the American Death Penalty [Hardcover]

Ivan Solotaroff (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 4, 2001

In fascinating detail, Ivan Solotaroff introduces us to men who carry out executions. Although the emphasis is on the personal lives of these men and of those they have to put to death, The Last Face You'll Ever See also addresses some of the deeper issues of the death penalty and connects the veiled, elusive figure of the executioner to the vast majority of Americans who have claimed to support executions since 1977. Why do we do it? Or, more exactly, why do we want to?

The Last Face You'll Ever See is not about the polarizing issues of the death penalty -- it is a firsthand report about the culture of executions: the executioners, the death-row inmates, and everyone involved in the act. An engrossing, unsettling, and provocative book, this work will forever affect anyone who reads it.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Donald Hocutt mixed the sulfuric acid bath that dissolved the cyanide that killed Jimmy Lee Gray. It was the first time the gas chamber had been used at Mississippi's Parchman State Penitentiary in 19 years, and it was the beginning of the end for the asphyxiation of death row prisoners. Gray's gruesome death shocked the nation and forced a move to lethal injections, but Hocutt acted as executioner for three more men before the switch. Journalist Ivan Solotaroff spent five years trying to understand the motive behind the death penalty by looking at executioners themselves, asking where and when and how, and the more difficult questions: Why do they do it and why do they want to do it? He interviewed men on death row, such as Wilbert Rideau and Douglas Dennis, editors of the acclaimed magazine The Angolite, who speak with remarkable eloquence, as well as witnesses to executions, such as Watt Espy, America's foremost historian of executions, who remarked, "I believe that more than one person dies with each execution." But most of those five years were spent with Hocutt and his one-time superior warden Donald Cabana. The two men had polar responses to their role as executioners--Hocutt, who used his violent disposition to control inmates, embraced his duty, while Cabana befriended the condemned to ease their passage--but both were ultimately broken by the ordeal.

Solotaroff creates an intimate picture of these men's lives while presenting an unflinching account of execution. His purpose is not to argue for or against the death penalty, but rather to question the real motive behind it: do Americans pursue the death penalty for deterrence or punishment, to rid a society of a blight, or is it "something altogether different--an expression of an irrational urge far more subterranean than the will to justice"? This is a finely written and humane examination of a rare breed of people and of an act clouded by a strange brew of sensationalism and obscurity. Solotaroff has grappled with the hardest questions--of vengeance and responsibility--and though he doesn't pretend to have found the answers, what he does reveal is thought-provoking and indelibly unsettling. --Lesley Reed

From Publishers Weekly

This look at America's executioners and their victims is a combination of cinema v‚rit‚ (think of Errol Morris's disturbing, and similarly disappointing, documentary, Mr. Death) and morbid fascination: "I wanted to know who carried out executions," and more specifically why they do it. Thus immersed in this "peculiar institution" for the last six years, Solotaroff (No Success Like Failure) brings readers on a discomfiting tour of the Death Belt, the statistical concentration of death-penalty states from Texas to Florida. Depicting ironically pleasant last meals with retarded convicts, the creepy antics of the death-house guards, and threats of possible innocents sent to their doom, Solotaroff specifically seeks not to illuminate the ongoing moral dialogue, but rather to examine the living complexities of executioners and the condemned, a relationship he oddly reveres as a kind of marriage although the metaphor is eventually abandoned in light of a cruel and imperfect bureaucracy. Readers visit death rows, hang out with executioners and meet the condemned, but the people along the way are alienated and alienating, and readers must remind themselves they are human beings. More problematic is that Solotaroff dodges the moral quagmire (claiming he embarked on this project out of "curiosity"), leaving the ethical responsibilities of his writing in a decidedly gray place. This is a well-written and readable book but an inadequate consideration of an important and timely subject. (Sept.)Forecast: Interest in the death penalty has increased in the wake of Timothy McVeigh's execution, and will be in the spotlight when Legal Lynching by Jesse Jackson Sr. and Jesse Jackson Jr. comes out in October, so sales of this might be buoyed by that book's wake.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Harper; 1st edition (September 4, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 006017448X
• ISBN-13: 978-0060174484
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,573,963 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well written perspective of the men who pull the lever., November 3, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Last Face You'll Ever See: The Private Life of the American Death Penalty (Hardcover)

Ivan Solotaroff's book skirts around the endless debate over the pros and cons of capital punishment and instead focuses with an unbiased look at the men who are responsible for carrying out death sentences. A brief history of executioners is given, but the main subjects of this book are Donald Hocutt and Don Cabana, the executioner and warden of Parchman prison in Mississippi in the 1980's.

I was relieved to to see that Solotaroff did not attack Hocutt for his job nor try to moralize an abolitionist position. Instead, he documents Hocutt's narratives not only about mixing chemicals and pulling the lever to release gas into the chamber, but also the rigors of being a guard in the maximum security unit at one of the nation's roughest prisons. The inmates are not made out to be angels, for their crimes are described in full, but we do see how isolation from society makes them despondent and desperate.

The dangers and visual horrors of execution via cyanide gas are well conveyed in this book. The 1983 execution of inmate Jimmy Lee Gray (who kidnapped, brutally raped a 3 year old neighbor before suffocating her in mud) did not go as planned. Hocutt, who was in direct sight of the inmate, watched as his body went into spasm from the gas and he repeatedly slammed his head into a steel support pole behind the chair to which he was strapped. Cabana, who was then with the Missouri Dept. of Corrections, was in the witness area -- contemplating the possibility of soon having to conduct an execution in his prison with this method.

The book embraces and seeks to shed light on that troubling question - how do these corrections officials deal with knowing they will put an inmate to death? Neither are enthusiastic about their responsibility (Cabana ultimately retired after conducting three executions at Parchman as it's warden and is now an abolitionist lecturer) but it is interesting to read how they endured stress and unease to varying degrees.

Having witnessed executions first hand, I can relate to some degree of the experiences of these men. It is not something to be taken lightly. If society decides that death is a justifiable penalty for certain egregious crimes (something which I support), then it is up to someone to carry out those sentences. We need not demonize them, for the book makes clear that these men have normal lives and families.

In closing, I am reminded of a line of dialogue in the 1967 film version of the novel 'In Cold Blood' between two reporters.

"Who is the executioner?"
'We the people'.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Unbalanced View of Complex Subject, May 25, 2002

By 

Frederick S. Goethel "wildcatcreekbooks" (Central Valley, CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Last Face You'll Ever See: The Private Life of the American Death Penalty (Hardcover)

I have read a number of books on prisons, punishement of criminals and the death peanalty. I have yet to find one that was balanced and this book is no exception.

From the title and information on the dust jacket, etc., you expect an insiders look at the death penalty and the men who are given the unenviable task of applying it. Instead, what you get (primarily) is a look at the death house at Mississippi's infamous Parchman Prison and the 2 men who oversaw 3 executions there in the 1980s. The only form of execution that is covered, in a more than passing fashion, is the gas chamber, which as the book was published had been done away with in every state in the US.

To cover this subject fully, the author needed to explore the other types of execution in the US and speak to executioners in more than one state and who have performed executions by more than this method alone. His focus on death by gassing, which may be the most miserable form of death, is in itself, a staement against the death penalty.

There are better books on the history, types and operation of various execution methods. For a true view of the subject, I suggest one of them.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars America's Sanctified Killers, April 16, 2002

By 

Matthew P. Arsenault (SW Michigan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Last Face You'll Ever See: The Private Life of the American Death Penalty (Hardcover)

Solotaroff did a commendable job maintaining his journalistic integrity and objectivity, especially when reporting on a topic as controversial as capital punishment, and that I think, is the key to successful reporting.

The author provided a face to the otherwise annonymous executioners who serve the will of society (or at least the court system) by actually enforcing the sentence of death.

Solotaroff choronicled the life and work of a number of executioners, and discussed the emotional repurcussions of serving as a state sanctified killer. He was able to capture the tumultuous emotions that accompany a life at the switch, and a life of "playing god."

There seems to be a fine line between jailer and the jailed, executioner and murderer, and Solotaroff did a fine job of capturing these subtle differences, and providing the reader with food for thought in regards to the American death penalty.