tcdla - Voice For The Defense Online

Don't Call Them Prisons
Rummel
Texas Criminal Justice Task Force. It is therefore fitting and
proper that the home of Texas' infamous death row memorializes
Charles Terrell.
Terrell disagrees. "Xvery time something happens on death
row, it's the 'Terrell Unit' and it's just really something I
don't want to read about,A Terrell told The Dallas Morninq Newg.
Last month, Terrell asxed the TBCJ to remove his name from the
death row facility. (The actual executions are performed in
Huntsville, 40 miles west of Livingston, at Texas' oldest prlson
which is known as "The Walls." The Livingston facility serves
as the holding area for Texas' condemned men.)
Terrell stepped down as prison board chairman in 1990.
He said he is ambivalent about the way the death penalty is
adminiatered in Texas today and questions whether it is an effective
deterrent.
"If I thought it was truly the deterrent that I felt the
electric chair was, maybe I wouldn't be so ambivalent," said
Terrell, adding that he didn't think that lethal injection "put
the fear of God in anybody like the tKouqht of the electric
chair did."
The TBCJ is ertpected to rename the Llvingston prison after
Allan B. Polunsky, the most recent former board chairman. Apparently
Polunsky, a San Antonio attorney, ha8 no qualms about
attaching his name to the death row that feeds the busiest execution
chamber in the nation.
Sources:
Associated Press reports