Life and Death in the Lone Star State

Texas sure is an exciting place. I'd forgotten how wild and trigger-happy my home state was until I returned to Houston last week for a little rest and leisure. In the span of the three days after Thanksgiving, we Texans got caught up in a real-life Western featuring a daring prison escape, several shootouts and a manhunt reminiscent of Bonnie and Clyde.

It was great to be home.

On the morning of Friday, Nov. 27, seven death row inmates attempted to escape from Huntsville Prison, about 80 miles north of Houston. The enterprising fellas apparently used a hacksaw to cut a hole in a recreation yard fence, hid on the roof of a cell block for nearly three hours and then made a mad dash for two 10-foot perimeter fences topped with razor wire. Huntsville guards opened fire immediately, emptying nearly 20 rounds. All the prisoners froze in their tracks and fell to the ground shaken but unhit--all except Martin E. Gurule, who scaled both walls (using either clothing or a blanket to protect himself from the razor wire) and escaped into the nearby forest.

And so began one of the greatest hunts since Tommy Lee Jones '69 chased Harrison Ford in "The Fugitive." Prison authorities began the search by deploying dog teams, which they followed closely on horseback. By Saturday the dogs had lost Gurule's scent in the middle of a thicket, and the state pressed into service helicopters using infrared and heat-detection devices. At press time, the chase was still on.

The prison escape is sensational enough, but even more intriguing to me is the person of Martin Gurule. Here's a guy who climbed over fences topped with razor wire to be free; who risked being shot to death by prison snipers; who is now almost certainly lost in snake-infested woods; who probably hasn't eaten in more than three days, and who has more than 500 officers hot on his trail. Gurule has to avoid not only the authorities but also gun-toting homeowners in the area, many of whom (understandably) are on edge.

Sentenced to die for the 1992 robbery and murder of a Corpus Christi restaurant owner and a cook, Gurule is a man who saw nothing to lose in trying to escape--he was going to be executed anyway. He certainly wouldn't have been the first. More than 480 people have been executed in the United States since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, 160 of them in Texas. Of the 3,500 inmates currently on death row nationwide, more than 450 are detained at Huntsville. It is interesting to note that Gurule was the first to escape from death row since the 1934 flight of Bonnie and Clyde gang member Raymond Hamilton--the man was clearly desperate. While he and his conspirators made meticulous plans to escape, they had no idea what they would do once they were outside the perimeter walls. They just had to get out.

In fact, the seven had it better than most at Huntsville. They had "work capable" status, which means that they could work either as custodians or in the prison's garment factory, unlike most Texas death row inmates, who are "locked down" in their cells 23 hours a day. "Work capable" inmates also can go in and out of their cells whenever they please, and have the opportunity to work in an air-conditioned environment during the sweltering summer months. Texas prison cells have no air-conditioning. That, in itself, is tantamount to a death sentence.

While Texas is an extreme example, 37 other states currently use the death penalty; capital punishment is here to stay. But it should give us pause to discover that at least 75 men and women nationwide have been released after having been sentenced to death wrongfully (in Texas alone, there have been seven); we can only wonder how many others have been wrongfully executed for crimes they did not commit.

Capital punishment is a complex, painful subject, and it's difficult to come down definitively on either side. On the one hand, we can't help but sympathize with victims' families and their yearning for closure, if not revenge. On the other, we see how a death sentence has dehumanized a man like Gurule, driving him to the depths of despair and desperation.

Whatever your position, the hype of an escape and the specter of a murderer lurking outside your door are more than enough to make you think about the delicate balance between your civil liberties and an inmate's. For me, returning to Texas reminded me of old times. It was good to go home and be reacquainted with guns, executions and shootouts--the sort of things that color every Texan's experience. Sujit Raman '00 is a history concentrator in Mather House. His column appears on alternate Tuesdays.