5.000 MISSISSIPPI DEATH HOUSE.
The
Death House at the Mississippi State Penitentiary is a one and a half story
facility measuring some seventeen (17) by twenty (20) feet containing some
three hundred forty (340) square feet and some two thousand, nine hundred
ninety-two (2,992) cubic feet, owing to a ceiling height of some eight
feet ten inches (8' 10"). It occupies part of, but is isolated from,
the L-shaped Maximum Security Facility containing the maximum security
cells for the prison and Death Row. The entire facility is constructed
of red brick. It has three steel doors, one from the Death Row area of
the Maximum Security Facility opening into the Control Room (used to bring
the executee into the Death House), a second in the rear of the building
for official witnesses which opens into the Witness Room and the third,
or main door, which opens from the main yard into the Control Room.
5.001 The Lethal Gas Chamber, which occupies the proximate center of
the Death Chamber, and the associated plumbing and hardware comprising
the gas execution system, was installed by the Eaton Metal Products Company
in October of 1954. It was reconditioned by Eaton 1n 1982. This system
is a typical Eaton Lethal Gas Chamber and differs from other Eaton installations
only by virtue of the fact that this has a single seat where some of the
others have two. The design and construction of the Eaton Lethal Gas Chamber
has not changed since the original installation in Arizona in the early
1920s.
5.002 The Execution Chamber, 17 feet by 20 feet, is separated into
three rooms by two partitions. The first partition divides the longer dimension
of the chamber. From its anchor on a long wall, the partition extends slightly
less than half-way towards its opposite anchor before encountering the
mid-perimeter point of the hexagonal Gas Chamber which has an interior
diameter of 6' 2". Thus half of the Gas Chamber is in each room.
The partition is, in reality, a riveted steel bulkhead. It runs vertically
from floor to ceiling. This divider separates the work area from the witness
room, which is the largest of the three rooms. A second wall is fabricated
of mortar, brick and plaster and runs perpendicularly from the steel bulkhead
to the shorter, outside wall in the work area. It has a door and window,
and separates the Chemical Room from the Control Room. The Chemical Room,
which is the smallest of the rooms, has a trap door in the floor at the
far end, which accesses, via a ladder, a pit beneath the lethal gas chamber.
In this pit is located the necessary plumbing for the lethal gas chamber
and the gas generator. The Chemical Room contains a sink, counter, the
acid mixing pot, the inlet valve and the necessary plumbing for the introduction
of the acid/water and ammonia into the gas generator of the lethal gas
chamber. The floor of the entire area is painted concrete.