Virginia state executioner who killed 62 people by electric chair and lethal injection becomes OPPONENT of the death penalty

Jerry Givens served as state executioner from 1982 until 1999

He kept his job hidden from his wife for 20 years

Accepted the job as he believed killers deserved to die, but his opinion changed when he came within hours of putting an innocent man to death

When he was himself convicted for a crime he says he did not commit, he lost complete faith in the system



Virginia's former executioner who put 62 people to death over a 17-year career has now become the state's most vocal opponent of the death penalty.

Jerry Givens, who carried out executions until 1999, began speaking out against the practice after he came within hours of putting an innocent man to death - and after he himself ended up in jail for a crime he says he did not commit.



He now believes that the death penalty is at odds with his religious convictions, and notes that the crime rate in his state actually went up when the death penalty was re-introduced in 1976.

'From the 62 lives I took, I learned a lot,' he told the Washington Post .

A changed man: Jerry Givens, pictured, was once the state executioner in Virginia and put 62 people to death over 17 years. He now vehemently opposes the death penalty

Givens started working as a Correctional Officer after losing his job at a tobacco factory and in 1976, before Virginia re-instated the death penalty, he was asked to join the 'Execution Team'.

Even though the job did not pay more, he agreed to join as he vehemently believed those who killed deserved to die.

When he was 14, he had witnessed a man break into a party and randomly shoot a teenage girl dead - and in the subsequent years, he would think of this killing before he carried out an execution.



He also reasoned that because murderers knew there was a death penalty in the state, he was not committing homicide.

'I could consider those people on death row as a suicide,' he told the Daily Life .

Old life: Givens is pictured left after he joined the Department of Corrections in the 1970s

Killing machine: Givens shows the electric chair system that was used to execute inmates before Virginia started using lethal injection. He executed 37 people by electric chair

Over the next 17 years, he executed 37 Death Row inmates by electric chair and 25 by lethal injection - although he had no formal medical training.

His first execution was in 1984, when he put Linwood Briley - one of three brothers who carried out a seven-month killing spree in Richmond in 1979 - to death.

Before the death, Givens prayed with Briley and then focused on the mechanics of the execution. But that night, he could not sleep.

'You are not going to feel happy,' he told the Post. 'You feel for the condemned man’s family and the victim’s family. You have two sets of families that are losing someone.'

But Givens went on to become one of the nation's most prolific executioners; the 62 men he put to death accounted for around 11 per cent of all the people executed across the country in those years.

Secret life: Givens, pictured left with fellow guards, kept his job secret from his wife for 20 years

Workplace: He worked at the Virginia State Penitentiary in Richmond, pictured, which has since closed

WANING SUPPORT FOR CORPORATE KILLING: EXECUTIONS IN VIRGINIA

Since the death penalty was re-instated in the United States in 1976, the state has put more people to death than any other state, besides Texas. A total of 110 inmates, who were all convicted of capital murder, have been executed since 1982. (Texas has executed 491.)

But statistics reveal there has been less support for the death penalty in Virginia in recent years. It has had fewer death sentences in the past five years than any period since the 1970s. Robert Gleason, who was executed on January 16 after asking to die so that he would not kill again, was the first execution in 18 months. This is compared with 1999, when the state put 13 people to death in a single year. In recent years, as the death penalty has become less of a key political issue, prosecutors have felt less pressure to recommend death penalties. Instead, the state has brought in sentences of life without parole, giving juries and prosecutors a different option. The number of death sentences across the country reached record lows in 2011 and 2012 - down 75 per cent since 1996, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Five states have outlawed capital punishment in the past five years: Connecticut (2012), Illinois (2011), New Mexico (2009), New Jersey (2007) and New York (2007).

In that time he kept his job a secret from his loved ones. For 20 years, even his wife was unaware that she was living with a professional killer.



Yet despite his belief that murderers knew what they were getting themselves into, he said 'crime went up'.

His belief in the justice system was also shaken when he came within hours of putting an innocent man to death in 1985.



Earl Washington Jr. was sentenced to death after admitting to the rape and murder of a 19-year-old mother. But he had an IQ of 69 and in police interviews, many of his answers failed to match up with the facts of the case.

Just days before he was due to be executed, lawyers secured a stay based on doubts about his part in the killing and in 1993, DNA evidence confirmed he was not the killer.



He was eventually cleared and pardoned, making him the first person on Virginia's death row to be exonerated by DNA evidence. It deeply affected Givens.



'If I execute an innocent person, I’m no better than the people on death row,' Givens told the Post.

He added that he wondered how many of the men he killed were innocent, and blamed the justice system and its juries for allowing it to happen.



'You're the American people,' he told ABC News . 'You sentenced a guy to be executed. You give him a trial, then you send him to me to be put to death.

'Then later on you [say] that this guy was innocent. You didn't put him to death. I did. I performed the execution. So you might suffer a little. I'm going to suffer a lot, because I performed the job.'



Despite his reservations, he continued to work as Virginia's chief executioner into the 1990s and rose to the rank of captain in the Department of Corrections.

Inmates: Givens' first execution was of Linwood Briley, left, in 1984 for a string of brutal murders in Richmond. Givens also came within hours of executing Earl Washington Jr., right, who was later found to be innocent



Fears: Givens, pictured with images of his family, said he wonders how many innocent people he killed

But in 1999, he was charged with money laundering and lying to a federal grand jury; authorities said he bought a car with a friend knowing that the funds came from drug dealing.

Givens, who maintains his innocence, was convicted and forced to resign - and his distrust in the justice system was confirmed.

He spent four years behind bars and immersed himself in the Bible. He soon realised that what he had done as executioner was not compatible with Jesus' teachings of forgiveness.

'This was God’s way of waking me up,' he said.

He does not regret his former work as he believes God put him in the role for a purpose, and took it away for a purpose.

'God said don't worry you go out and save souls. You took 62 but you can save millions,' he said.

Last view: An electric chair stands in front of the witness box in the basement of the Virginia State Penitentiary in Richmond in August 1982 after the state reintroduced the death penalty

After his release in 2004, he found work as a truck driver and started attending Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty meetings.

He joined their board in 2009 and started delivering speeches across the country about his experience and his new outlook on the death penalty.



In 2010, he gave an emotional testimony at a state legislative hearing on a bill seeking to extend the death penalty to accomplices in murders - and he helped to defeat it.