Copyright © 2004 Ware Cornell. All rights reserved. 

When they electrocuted him, flames shot out of his headpiece, and some of the official witnesses, mainly crime reporters, got physically sick. Mother handed me the newspaper account of what the state’s Director of Corrections had called a "successful execution", which I suppose it was, since Benson was officially dead.

It had been nearly two decades since Benson had walked among us. The machinery of justice then was a frigid courtroom and a world-wide audience of instant experts on Florida’s judicial system. We had watched Benson in our living rooms, strutting across the well of the courtroom to hand a rusty hammer to a crime scene investigator. We heard him declare his innocence in the face of all that evidence, the hammer, the duct tape, the rope, the clothing, the blood-soaked pillows, the shoes, methodically introduced piece by piece by grim-faced prosecutors. We saw him pale slightly when those twelve citizens walked in with the final verdict. They had looked down and away from him, away from the handsome boy in the blue suit.

Mother had a different perspective from millions of us. She had seen it all from seat number two in the jury box.

Then there were the appeals. Each one got a headline and television news lead. Every year it seemed there was some new story on Benson. He fired his lawyers twice. He volunteered for death once, only to exercise his right to change his mind. One year he got religion and was on Christian television live from death row. He wrote letters to the editor which were not always about prison and death row. Once he had an op-ed piece published about tax cuts. He favored them. Why I do not know. He sold paintings and had a show in Jacksonville, where one of them went for $2,000. Two guards were fired for smuggling him panties that were being sent to him by love-struck women. The Director of the Department of Corrections admitted that Benson had received over two hundred pieces a mail a week over the course of his incarceration. Apparently at least thirty of them proposed marriage each week, earning Benson another spot in the Guinness Book of Records.

Her hand was trembling when she put it in front of me to read. That she was up surprised me. She had taken to her bed before the news crew had come by yesterday afternoon.

"Do you think he suffered?" Mother asked.

"Oh, hell Mother, how should I know? The warden says not."

In the end, it had taken three attempts to dispatch him. The paper had detailed it very precisely- 2300 volts administered for seventeen seconds followed by a 1700 volt surge for five seconds was required normally. Every time the prison doctor checked him, he was still breathing. Finally and even though the doctor indicated the breath sounds seemed to be a lot fainter, the warden authorized a final prolonged blast of current that cooked him so completely that the guards decided to wait a quarter hour before removing him from the chair.

"I’ve never killed anybody before."

"Mother, you didn’t kill anybody yesterday. The state did that. Not you."

"You remember when the judge asked if we had any opinions about the guilt or innocence of Benson? I said ‘no’. I swore I didn’t. Raised my hand to tell the truth. I said ‘no’ and Benson put his life in my hands because I said ‘no.’ But I did, I wanted to be on that jury. I wanted him dead for what he did to those girls."

"Mother you and eleven other people convicted him. I don’t even know how many judges looked at this case. Hell, it went to the Supreme Court twice last week. If it was wrong somebody would have stopped it."

"You don’t understand. I wanted him dead."

"Yes Mother, I do understand, you and about three quarters of the country wanted him dead."

"But they weren’t in a position to kill him. I was."

I sighed.

"Besides," she said. Mother could never stand the void of silence. "All those other jurors, they wanted him dead too. They said they didn’t have an opinion and they were back there in the-whatever you call it-assembly room, practicing to go into the court… ‘Bob, who?’ ‘No, I haven’t read much about it.’ ‘I don’t believe in television news, too violent, I watch Sesame Street with my kids.’ They all wanted to be the ones, just like me. Pull the switch. Toast him."

"Mother, let it go."

"How can I let it go? They killed Bob Benson. They tortured him, burned him. And I am responsible. He never did confess you know. What if he was really innocent? Then oh God we not only killed an innocent man, the real killer is walking around killing girls."

"Jesus, once they caught him there weren’t any more killings. It’s been almost twenty years."

"How do you know that? How do you know? Do you think they would tell us? Don’t you think there were girls killed in that twenty years that we don’t know who killed them?"

Mother left the room, sniffling. I sat quietly for a few minutes, then got up and went into her room. Last night’s Larry King was being repeated on CNN…talking heads talking about Benson. She sat transfixed. On the coffee table was a letter. She always got the mail. I hadn’t seen this before. I picked up the envelope, addressed in pencil, a neat almost feminine hand... Raiford Prison.

"Did I tell you he wrote me?"

"No, Mother, you didn’t."

"He forgave me. He forgave me. I was going to kill him and he forgave me."

I closed the door behind me. Mother sat with the talking heads. I could hear King playing a video from the return of the verdict. I looked back in on Mother. She had slunk down low in the chair.

I hated the bastard. Deprived of rope, hammer and duct tape, he had finally learned to kill with words.

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