"Donald Cabana, Warden Who Loathed Death Penalty, Dies at 67," is the New York Times obituary written by Bruce Weber. Here's the beginning of this must-read:
The first time Donald A. Cabana saw the gas chamber at the Mississippi State Penitentiary, in 1971, he was invited to sit inside it. He was 25 years old, had only brief experience as a corrections officer and was on a tour of the place — better known as Parchman Farm — hoping to work there one day. Certainly he did not envision himself as its future warden.
Nor did he imagine that he would preside over executions there — experiences that would transform him into an eloquent opponent of capital punishment. Known as a tough warden but not a ruthless one and a man with an active conscience, Mr. Cabana was the antithesis of the cruel, power-hungry, vindictive prison official of cliché. On that afternoon in 1971, in his first glimpse of the gas chamber, the seeds of his ambivalence had already been planted.
“Our guide invited me to occupy the chair, explaining that many of those who toured the prison wanted to experience sitting in it,” Mr. Cabana wrote in his 1998 memoir, “Death at Midnight: The Confession of an Executioner.” “How odd some people are, I thought, that they should be so attracted to the macabre. I politely declined the offer. The death chamber was filled with ghosts.”
He added, “I shuddered at the thought of the terrible struggles and horrific events that had taken place there.”
Mr. Cabana was 67 when he died of an intestinal infection on Monday in Hattiesburg, Miss., his daughter Kristin Fitzgerald said. He had worked for more than 25 years in prisons in Massachusetts, Florida and Missouri as well as Mississippi. But he left corrections work for academic life in the early 1990s, largely because of his distaste for the death penalty.
Since then he had spent time in classrooms, at public forums and in a statehouse or two denouncing capital punishment as an ineffectual deterrent to crime, an expensive burden for taxpayers and an inhumane form of punishment, not only for the men and women who face execution but also for those who carry it out.
“There is a part of the warden that dies with his prisoner,” he often said.
"Death penalty opponent, OA grad Donald Cabana dies at age 67," is by Donna Whitehead in the Easton Enterprise.
Donald Cabana, whose book, “Death at Midnight: the Confession of an Executioner,” chronicled his journey from prison warden to death penalty expert and opponent, died Oct. 7 in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, Cabana, 67, was a 1963 graduate of Oliver Ames High School.
And:
His work in corrections spanned more than 40 years, taking him from Massachusetts to Florida, Missouri, and finally, Mississippi. He served as a deputy warden and warden in Missouri before being appointed superintendent of the Mississippi State Penitentiary in 1984. He later served as superintendent of the South Mississippi Correctional Institution from 1989 to 1991, retiring to pursue a career in academia.
He taught as a professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Southern Mississippi for 10 years, serving as chairman of the Department from 2005 to 2006.
He later became warden of the Harrison County Adult Detention Center, as well as founder and first chair of the Criminal Justice Program at William Carey University.
“Don was a walking encyclopedia on corrections,” said Tom Panko, a colleague of Cabana’s in the School of Criminal Justice in an article on the University of Southern Mississippi web site. “He knew the system from the inside out. He had a wealth of stories about life inside the (prison) walls and was a master storyteller. His legacy is large and he will be dearly missed.”
Earlier coverage of Don Cabana's life and work begins at the link. More information on Death at Midnight is available from the publisher.
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