The Death Squad of Alabama.

• Author: Hinton, Anthony Ray
• Position: The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row - Excerpt

I didn't even realize they had executed Wayne Ritter until I smelled his burned flesh. I didn't know Wayne--I didn't know anyone yet--but in the middle of the night on August 28, 1987, there was the sound of a generator kicking on and then hissing and popping, and the lights in the hall outside my cell flickered on and off. And then through the night, the smell came.

It's hard to explain what death smells like, but it burned my nose and stung my throat and made my eyes water and my stomach turn over. I spent the next day dry heaving, my stomach retching and twisting. All up and down the row, you could hear men blowing their noses, trying to get the smell away.

There was no real ventilation or air circulating, so the smell of death--like a mixture of shit and rotting waste and vomit all mixed up in a thick smoke of putrid air that you couldn't escape--seemed to settle into my hair and in my throat and mouth. I rubbed at my eyes until they were red and gritty. I heard one of the guys complain to a guard about the smell.

"You'll get used to it." The guard laughed. "Next year or one of these days, somebody's going to be smelling you just the same." I felt my stomach turn over and heave as I ran to the toilet. I was swallowing Wayne Ritter every time I took a breath.

How long had he been there?, I wondered. Did they kill people every week? Every month? Did Ritter know they were killing him that day? I didn't know when they would come for me. Could they come kill me even though I was on appeal? If my appeal failed, would they come take me right away--pull me from my cell in the middle of the night and strap me to a chair and electrocute me until I lost control of my bowels and my heart stopped and the smell of my burning flesh and fried organs drifted up and down the row to remind men of what was to come?

I couldn't stop my mind from imagining what it would feel like to be sitting in that chair, known as Yellow Mama, and the fear crushed my chest until I thought I would stop breathing. Everything in me was fighting to run, but there was nowhere to go. It was like when you have a dream where you open your mouth to scream but no sound comes out and you stand there, mouth open and helpless, as danger descends.

I had never thought about the death penalty too much before being on death row. It was never in my world as something to think about. At my trial, the prosecutor had asked me what I thought the appropriate sentence would be for someone who did...