You're listening to the Americana podcast from BBC Radio 4 and the World Service.
I'm Catti K. I'd like to play you one more personal story.
This time from a man who stands pretty much alone in this country
as being prepared to talk about his work. I'll let him speak for himself.
My name is Jerry Gibbons. Bronson Gibbons, that's my middle name.
I'm from Richmond, Virginia. My job in Richmond was a captain and lieutenant
at the Virginia State Penitentiary on 500 Springs Creek.
I was approached by a major. I can't reveal his name now,
but he asked me what I'd be interested in joining the execution team.
I said, well, yeah, I'll go ahead and try, you know, just to see what it's all about.
And from there and on, I executed 62 people in the state of Virginia
doing my state of 17 years. I never discussed that with my family members
because I didn't know how they would take that.
And being an executioner, you want to keep things secret.
I didn't want them to have the way to burdens that I had the way, you know.
I had to get out of myself and get into the executioner mold.
It's hard to explain. Like I said, never let anything interfere with this.
If I was cutting this hair, I was still in print form, you know, in my mind, in my heart.
They had to make the best of that day that they had.
This was the last day that they can see that family members.
This is the last visit, the last meal, the last telephone call,
the last smoke of a cigarette, the last goodbye.
It was the last everything.
I'm currently driving truck now.
I enjoy what I do. I'm on the road a lot.
I'm closer now to God than I've ever been.
I guess because I'm getting a little older and wiser.
So you come to realize that it's none of us exempt from doing wrong.
And he without seeing cast the first on.
Couldn't nobody throw that stone because we all have sin.
It's the same thing when it comes down to executions.
He without sin be the executioner.
Governor Pat Quinn, as you listen to Jerry Givens there,
I was wondering what goes through your own mind.
Well, I think it's interesting.
62 executions that he was present at.
It sounds to me like he's got some second thoughts.
I think an unreflected life is not doing what God wants you to do on earth.
You should always think about important things and think carefully about them.
I suppose 100 years some now and people talk about me.
They'll say that he was a governor who signed the abolition of the death penalty in Illinois,
the land of Lincoln.
And I did it in my office.
And my office has a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, a very beautiful portrait.
He was looking over my shoulder.
And I said that if he was here today 150 years later,
in my shoes, I believe Abraham Lincoln would have signed the same legislation
to abolish the death penalty that I did.
Governor Pat Quinn of Illinois.
