The Associated Press reports, "Cabana, ex-corrections chief, dies in Hattiesburg." It's filed by Jack Elliott Jr, via the San Francisco Chronicle.
Donald A. Cabana, who ran the state penitentiary at Parchman where he oversaw executions and later wrote about his experiences with death row inmates, has died. He was 67.Mississippi corrections officials say Cabana died Monday at Wesley Medical Center in Hattiesburg after a long illness. Funeral services are pending. A list of survivors was not immediately available.
Cabana spent 40 years in corrections including stints as warden at Parchman and commissioner of the Department of Corrections. He also was chairman of the criminal justice programs at the University of Southern Mississippi and William Carey University. He also worked as warden at the Harrison County jail.
In the 1980s, Cabana supervised two executions, that of Edward Earl Johnson and Connie Ray Evans.
In his memoir — "Death At Midnight: The Confessions of an Executioner" — Cabana recounted his experiences with death row inmates and how he came to oppose the death penalty.
In the preface to the book, Cabana wrote that he spent most of his career as a prison administrator convinced of the need for capital punishment.
"I had always been something of a bureaucratic utopian, fully committed to the notion that if the government deemed capital punishment necessary then it must be so ... Not until I was confronted with supervising and carrying out the ultimate retribution did I begin to question the process in earnest.
"The execution of Edward Earl Johnson served as a milestone, an event at which to pause and wonder. But it was the execution of Connie Ray Evans that became, for me, a personal moment of truth," Cabana wrote.
As linked above more information on Death at Midnight is available from the publisher.
Related posts are in the In Memoriam category index.
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