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35-682: The prison opened in September 1983. The Terrell Unit was originally the Ramsey III Unit . After the previous Terrell Unit (now the Polunsky Unit ) in West Livingston, Texas began to receive death row inmates, the facility's namesake, a Dallas insurance executive named Charles Terrell, wanted his name off of the prison; as a result his name was transferred to another prison. The Texas Board of Criminal Justice voted to rename

70-406: A Glock pistol from his jacket upon returning the second time and fired the gun once without warning at Yi Chung Myong's temple from a distance of 30 cm (12 inches). During the trial, Wilkerson testified that the murder was not committed in self-defense or accidentally. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed his conviction and sentence on December 12, 1994. He also appealed to

105-475: A 2012 book by Bruce Jackson and Diane Christian discusses the Polunsky Unit. According to one passage: "Whenever a condemned prisoner goes anywhere outside his cell, he must back up to the door, drop to his knees, and extend his hands backward through the narrow slot to be handcuffed. Then he stands, turns around, and waits for the door to be opened. The whole process of dropping to the knees and extending

140-807: A dramatic scene involving community activist Njeri Shakur (member of the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement and the Allen Parkway Village Residents Council) shouting at Judge Krocker, which led to a contempt charge against Shakur; she served 30 days in the Harris County Jail. Shakur and Deloyd Parker Jr. (the founder of the S.H.A.P.E. Community Centre) became friends with Ponchai while he was on death row. On February 12, 2000, Wilkerson and fellow death row inmate Howard Guidry took 57-year-old guard Jeanette Bledsoe hostage at

175-455: A fictional chef cooking the last meals for Death Row inmates in Polunsky. Llegada la hora (Spanish) Paperback: 214 pages; Publisher: Dharma Books (June, 2019); Language: Spanish; ISBN   978-607-29-1624-1 The National Public Radio (NPR) Podcast series Consider This devoted an episode about the death row radio station, The Tank 106.5, based on the reporting of Keri Blakinger for

210-399: A prison chaplain from Livingston , into his cell. The offender tied a sheet around the chaplain's arm and tied the other end to a toilet; Soria began cutting Westbrook's arm with a razor blade. The offender nearly tore Westbrook's arm off. The authorities used tear gas to stop the attack. Authorities treated Soria's former cell as a crime scene and moved Soria to a more restricted area within

245-524: A white concrete building with blue steel supports, is "functionally designed and pleasantly asymmetrical" and that a person would mistake the building for a community college "if not for the three-inch window slits." As of March 2013 about 290 male death row prisoners are housed in Polunsky. As of March 2013 eight are instead housed in Jester IV Unit , a psychiatric unit near Richmond, Texas . Photographs taken inside death row were provided by

280-639: Is "the hardest place to do time in Texas." Perkinson added that while the prison is not in a "gloomy" location and that the facility is not "dangerously dilapidated", the prison's "existential problem" is the fact that it is the state death row. In May 2013 Mother Jones magazine ranked Polunsky as one of the ten worst prisons in the US, based on Congressional testimony from former inmate Anthony Charles Graves (TDCJ Death Row#999127, released due to overturning of conviction on September 7, 2006 ) and research conducted by

315-659: Is located on the other side of FM 350. The unit, along the Big Thicket , is 60 miles (97 km) east of Huntsville . Polunsky was named after Allan B. Polunsky, a former chairman of the Texas Board of Criminal Justice and former chairman of the Public Safety Commission , the governing board of the Texas Department of Public Safety . Polunsky houses Texas' " supermax " units and

350-708: Is notable for being the location of Texas's death row for men (executions, though, are conducted at the Huntsville Unit in Huntsville). The Polunsky Unit opened in November 1993. At the time of its opening the public did not associate the prison with the death penalty, as the state's male death row inmates were housed at the Ellis Unit near Huntsville. In November 1998 Martin Gurule , a death row inmate in

385-587: The Fort Worth Star-Telegram described Polunsky as "a somber complex of putty-gray concrete buildings trimmed in blue on 470 fenced acres." Miriam Rozen of the Houston Press said that the unit "sits amid the same kind of lush, green and hilly East Texas terrain that surrounds Governor Bush 's lake house 100 miles to the north in Athens ." Marc Bookman of Mother Jones said that

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420-527: The Marshall Project for The Guardian. All death row prisoners on this list are and were under death sentences given by the State of Texas. Awaiting execution but moved out of Polunsky: Ponchai Wilkerson Ponchai Kamau Wilkerson (July 15, 1971 – March 14, 2000) (also Ponchai Kamau, Kamau Wilkerson, Ponchai "Kamau" Wilkerson) was a convicted murderer executed by lethal injection by

455-472: The Terrell Unit ) is a prison in West Livingston , unincorporated Polk County, Texas , United States, located approximately 5 miles (8.0 km) southwest of Livingston along Farm to Market Road 350 . The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) operates the facility. The unit houses the State of Texas death row for men, and it has a maximum capacity of 2,900. Livingston Municipal Airport

490-461: The U.S. state of Texas . He was convicted for the 28 November 1990 murder of jeweler Chung Myong Yi. He was convicted by a jury on July 16, 1991, and ten days later sentenced to death by the same jury. Ponchai Kamau Wilkerson (โพนชัย กาเมา วิลเกอร์สัน), of African-American and Thai descent, was born in Houston, Texas . Not much is known about Wilkerson's early childhood; he later grew up in

525-735: The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Supreme Court of the United States , who both denied his appeals. During Thanksgiving Day , 1998, Wilkerson and six other death row inmates were involved in an attempted prison break. One inmate, Martin Gurule , managed to escape, but was shot and drowned soon afterwards. Wilkerson and the other six inmates involved all surrendered. Wilkerson exhausted his final appeal to Judge Jan Krocker in February 2000,

560-534: The Ellis Unit, escaped. He drowned in a nearby creek and his body was found a week later. After the incident occurred, the TDCJ considered moving the death row for men, and the Polunsky Unit was the favored choice for the relocation. According to the TDCJ, the prison escape attempt had hastened the agency's decision to move death row inmates to a new location. TDCJ officials also stated that overcrowding at Ellis

595-630: The Fort Bend-Houston area east of Missouri City, Texas , attending public schools in the Fort Bend Independent School District . Ponchai graduated from Willowridge High School in 1990. On November 28, 1990, Wilkerson and Wilton Bethony entered Yi Chung Myong's jewellery shop Royal Gold Jewellery Store in Houston, Texas. They had been on a crime spree for a month. Wilkerson left briefly twice, and pulled

630-529: The Ramsey III Unit on July 20, 2001. In 2008 a state investigation began in regards to accusations that a cabal of prison guards is organizing large scale smuggling of goods into the unit. A prison guard at the unit sent a complaint to Jerry Madden , a member of the Texas House of Representatives , saying that corruption was occurring at the unit. TDCJ investigators searched the entire unit. After

665-455: The State of Texas in response to a Freedom of Information Act (United States) request filed by attorney Yolanda Torres in 2009. The death row prisoners reside in Building 12, a two-story facility which opened in 1993 to house administrative segregation prisoners in solitary confinement. This building has three rectangular sections, and a recreational area, in the shape of the circle, is in

700-631: The Terrell Unit (now Allan B. Polunsky Unit ) outside Livingston, Texas after Wilkerson apparently opened his cell door's lock. Members of the National Black United Front and the S.H.A.P.E. Centre demanded that Wilkerson release the hostage. Thirteen hours later, the guard was released unharmed. On the day of his execution, Wilkerson refused to leave his cell at the Terrell Unit prison near Livingston, Texas . Guards were forced to use Mace -like gas and carry him to and from

735-414: The administration of the death penalty. In addition he reportedly was ambivalent regarding capital punishment. In exchange, the former Ramsey III Unit was renamed the Terrell Unit. In 2010, the TDCJ accused five men who were serving life sentences of attempting to break out of the unit. Robert Perkinson, author of Texas Tough: The Rise of America's Prison Empire , said in 2010 that Polunsky "probably"

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770-617: The arms backward is particularly difficult and painful for the older convicts with arthritis." Jackson and Christian point out that the state laws for Texas, and most other states, do not lay out "the specific conditions under which condemned prisoners live." Polunsky is a setting of the book Blow Fly by Patricia Cornwell . The popular novel by John Grisham, The Confession , is set around Polunsky. The Confession [John Grisham] Paperback: 464 pages; Publisher: Arrow (May 1, 2011); Language: English; ISBN   978-0099545798 The Mexican novel Llegada la hora by Karla Zárate talks about

805-523: The center of each section. The death row offenders live in single person, 60-square-foot (5.6 m ) cells, with each cell having a slit window and a concrete door. There is a "tempered air" system intended to keep inside temperatures at 85 degrees Fahrenheit (29 degrees Celsius) or below. The death row buildings have a total of 504 cells. Prior to the relocation of the men's death row, prison authorities held non-death row "administrative segregation" prisoners in these cells. These prisoners were relocated when

840-404: The death row inmates on Friday June 18, 1999, with the first 55 inmates all classified as being troublesome. The death row transfer, which took ten months, was the largest transfer of condemned prisoners in history and was performed under heavy security. In February 2000 two death row inmates took a 57-year-old female corrections officer hostage, forcing negotiations involving the warden. One of

875-405: The death row uniforms have the letters "DR" in black on the backs. Perkinson said that the wait times that the offenders have before execution make the prison stressful for the inmates, visitors, and employees. Jonathan Bruce Reed (TDCJ Death Row #642, now TDJC#1743674 due to a reduction of the sentence to life imprisonment on November 3, 2011 ), a death row offender, said that the mentality of

910-726: The death row unit is "we keep you kenneled until your date." Larry Todd, a spokesperson of the prison, said that "when a person walks on to death row, there is a sense of change. It's just a different atmosphere." During a US Judiciary hearing on solitary confinement, Anthony Graves, a former prisoner in the death row who was released in 2010, said that conditions were making prisoners lose their sanity. In 2013 James Ridgeway and Jean Casella of Mother Jones stated that "Some have been known to commit suicide or waive their appeals rather than continue living under such conditions." In This Timeless Time: Living and Dying on Death Row in America ,

945-467: The death van that took him to the Hunstville Unit. He did not request a last meal or give any instructions on the disposal of his body. When asked by the warden if he had a last statement, he responded "This is not a capital punishment case!" After the drugs were administered, Wilkerson spit out an inch-and-a-half universal handcuff and leg restraint key. It was unknown how Wilkerson obtained

980-426: The hostage-takers, Ponchai Wilkerson (TDCJ#999011 ), was scheduled to be executed on March 14, 2000, and was, in fact, later executed on that date. The other, Howard Guidry, had no scheduled execution date. Guidry remains on death row. On May 9, 2000, 33-year-old death row inmate Juan Salvez Soria (TDCJ#837 ), who was scheduled to be executed on July 26, 2000, pulled the arm of 78-year-old William Paul Westbrook,

1015-467: The investigation on the matter, Anthony Collins, the senior warden, lost his job. TDCJ investigators searched the entire prison to find evidence of corruption. The Texas Senate ordered prison officials to testify in a hearing related to the incident. Current: Former: 12) http://www.kwtx.com/content/news/Third-Texas-prison-unit-evacuated-because-of-Brazos-River-flooding-381784271.html Polunsky Unit Allan B. Polunsky Unit ( TL , formerly

1050-401: The magazine during a three-year period. As of 2014 the prison had 691 employees and 2,936 prisoners. As of that year there were 279 men on Polunsky's death row. The 584,000-square-foot (54,300 m ) facility has twenty-three buildings, on 472 acres (191 ha) of land. The surrounding area includes fields and forests. It has a capacity of about 2,900 prisoners. David Casstevens of

1085-517: The men's death row changed locations. Death row offenders receive no programming and are not allowed to work. Death row prisoners receive meals through bean slots, gates in the cell doors. Whenever an offender is taken from his cell, such as when the offender goes to take a shower, the offender is strip searched . The offenders receive individual recreation in a caged area. Depending on the custody level, death row offenders may be eligible for having radios. Death row inmates wear white jumpsuits, and

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1120-425: The prison "looks as one might imagine a death row would look—a series of imposing concrete structures surrounded by excessive razor wire and four guard towers." Alex Hannaford of The Nation described it as a "bleak, foreboding complex". The Polunsky Unit was designed to house more problematic and dangerous inmates; the officials designed the unit to be more secure than the older TDCJ units. Throughout its history

1155-528: The prison. Soria was executed on schedule. The Texas Board unanimously approved giving former Terrell Unit its current name, Allan B. Polunsky Unit , on July 20, 2001. The board also voted to rename the Ramsey III Unit in Brazoria County, Texas to the Terrell Unit . The former namesake, a Dallas insurance executive named Charles Terrell, requested the name change because he did not want his name associated with death row because of questions about

1190-421: The unit housed administrative segregation offenders (offenders in solitary confinement due to chronic misbehavior or violence). The building housing death row inmates is separate from the rest of the compound. Polunsky has a kitchen, a medical treatment clinic, psych interview rooms, and classification office space. Robert Perkinson, author of Texas Tough: The Rise of America's Prison Empire , said that Polunsky,

1225-488: Was another factor in the death row move. Six months after the escape attempt, the TDCJ decided to move the death row. The Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty criticized the move of the death row, saying that the conditions of the prisoners were worse than those in their previous location. The Texas Board of Criminal Justice approved the relocation of the men's death row on Friday May 21, 1999. Polunsky took

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