Breaking news: Michael Lambrix was killed by the State of Florida on October 5, 2017.
Read more:
http://deathrowjournals.blogspot.com/



Michael Lambrix #482053
Florida State Prison
PO Box 800
Raiford FL 32083


For more information on Mike's case visit:





Contact Gov. Scott and ask him to suspend Mike's and ALL executions.
Phone: (850) 488-7146
Email: Rick.scott@eog.myforida.com - See more at: http://doinglifeondeathrow.blogspot.gr/#sthash.Cw0Zh7Sh.dpuf

recanted and the other gave inconsistent statements to police. Read more http://www.save-innocents.com/save-michael-lambrix.html

Wednesday, 2 December 2015

Clemency denied and execution date set for Mike Lambrix!!







Michael Lambrix #482053
Florida State Prison
7819 NW 228th street
Raiford Florida 32026-1000


Gov. Scott has already broken the record for most executions by a Florida governor!


Contact Gov. Scott and ask him to suspend Mike's and ALL executions.
Phone: (850) 488-7146
Email: Rick.scott@eog.myforida.com
- See more at: http://doinglifeondeathrow.blogspot.gr/#sthash.Cw0Zh7Sh.dpuf

Contact Gov. Scott and ask him to suspend Mike's and ALL executions.
Phone: (850) 488-7146
Email: Rick.scott@eog.myforida.com - See more at: http://doinglifeondeathrow.blogspot.gr/#sthash.Cw0Zh7Sh.dpuf

Monday 28 November 2011

Execution Day November 15, 2011

Days like today really suck. Few people can even begin to understand what all of us here on death row go through when they put one of us to death. A few hours ago the State of Florida put Oba Chandler to death by lethal injection. For those who even knew of this event, at best it amounted to nothing more than a few seconds on the sic o’ clock news, summarily reporting that at 4:00 PM this afternoon Oba Chandler was put to death at Florida State Prison. As the story was told on the news, they may have seen the white hears pulling out of the prison gate carrying his body back out to the real world, but that’s it.

For those of us here, it was an all day ritual that cumulated in the death of someone who lived among us for 17 years. Myself, I did not personally know Oba Chandler, as |I was never housed on the same tier as him. We live in a small world, but it is a methodically segregated world where each of us are continiously kept in individual solitary cages until they are ready to put us to death.

Unless you’re actually housed on the same floor in proximity of others, you may never cross paths with many others as the only other time you might meet others is in the death row yard or in the “visiting park” And in the 17 years Chandler spent on Florida’s death row he never once had a visit. Many of the guys back here never get a visit – nobody cares to come see them, not even when the state prepares to kill them. Prisons are full of tragic stories. Nobody should have to face death without someone there to reach out in compassion. In the weeks leading up to the death of Oba Chandler we heard many on the local news zealously arguing why simply putting a 65 year old man, who allegedly killed 3 people over 20 years ago, by lethal injection was too humane. These people wanted him to suffer, as in their opinion taking his life was not enough.

I honestly don’t know what to say about those who are compelled to advocate torturing a condemned man to death. For over a quarter century I have lived among those that society has labeled to be the worst of the worst, but when I hear these people talk I have to wonder who the real monsters are? Even if I am to assume that these condemned are actually guilty of whatever heinous crimes they were convicted of, I know that inflicting that same measure of death upon another would only make me just as much as a monster.

What I know is that Oba Chandler’s last days and hours were not easy. I cannot imagine how anyone of moral conscience could say that forcing a person to quite literally count down the final hours, then minutes until they are deliberately put to death is humane. I have been there myself comig within hours of being executed and although tat was now almost 22 years ago this month, I still have nightmares about my own death watch experience. ( see http://mikelambrix.blogspot.gr/2009/01/facing-my-own-execution.html )

I personally know a lot of the staff who work here and I was troubled by what I heard. Up until recently, when executions are scheduled the warden would do all he could to make it appear to be just another day. But not warden Singer. He apparently thrives on the whole ritual, making it an all day event that every prisoner here cannot ignore. Warden Singer wants us to know that it is a special day, that it will be a day that one of us will die. From early morning hours he has ordered the staff to wear their “dess uniform” (class A), which is only done on execution days. From breakfast through dinner the meal schedule is deliberately thrown off, breaking te normal routine and causing stress and anxiety among all prisoners.
Up until warden Singer took ver, previous wardens would at least try to show compassion to the condemned - but humanity comes from being humane, and just because you’re a man doesn’t make you humane. I was troubled when I was told that contrary to long standing tradition warden Singer did not allow Oba Chandler to have a last meal. Instead, all he got was a brown bag with a state peanut butter sandwich. If we can not find that measure of compassion and basic humanity when taking the life of another person then we really have to wonder who the real monsters are.

Michael Lambrix

Please check out my website http://www.southerninjustice.net

Monday 31 October 2011

In my nightmares I can see their faces

I wanted to share the following article that was recently published in Newsweek magazine (October 3, 2011) Most of the time what I post reflects my own perspective of life on death row. But there's always more to the story than just one side. The following tells a story few of us ever gave any thought to - what it's like for the guards and wardens who are ordered by their superiors to put someone to death.

In the many years that I have been on Florida's death row - since March 1989 - I have come to know many of the prison guards who interact with us daily. I've also gotten to know a few of the wardens. i know many have expressed their own personal and moral reservations with the whole issue of capital punishment. But equally so, I've known many more who openly advocate expediting executions, even if it means putting innocent people to death.

The below article made me take a look at the issue from the perspective of those few who despite the environment still possess that measure of moral conscience that ultimately defines our humanity. And as long as there are a few within the system willing to speak out, there's hopw for all of us.

Michael Lambrix
October, 2011


Ordering death in Georgia
'In my nightmares I can see their faces'
September 29, 2011|By Allen Ault

I can't always remember their names, but in my nightmares I can see their faces. As the commissioner of the Georgia Department of Corrections from 1992 until 1995, I oversaw five executions. The first two were Thomas Dean Stevens and Christopher Burger, accomplices in a monstrous crime: as teenagers in 1977, they robbed and raped a cabdriver, put him in the trunk of a car, and pushed the vehicle into a pond. I had no doubt that they were guilty: They admitted it to me. But now it was 1993, and they were in their 30s. All these years later, after a little frontal-lobe development, they were entirely different people.

On execution days, I always drove from Atlanta to the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson. I knew death row well: 20 years earlier, I had built it. The state had hired me as the warden of Georgia Diagnostic in 1971, where I renovated a special cell block for especially violent offenders. After I left Georgia in 1977, the state reinstated the death penalty and turned the cell block I had developed into death row.

The state executed Stevens first, in June 1993, and then Burger in December. In both instances, I visited them in a cell next to the electric-chair chamber, where they counted down the hours until they died.

They were calm, mature, and remorseful. When the time came, I went to a small room directly behind the death chamber where the attorney general worked the phones, checking with the courts to make sure that the executions were not stayed. Then we asked the prisoners for their final words. Stevens said nothing, and Burger apologized, saying, "Please forgive me." I looked to the prison electrician and ordered him to pull the switch.

Last Wednesday, as the state of Georgia prepared to execute Troy Davis despite concerns about his guilt, I wrote a letter with five former death-row wardens and directors urging Georgia prison officials to commute his sentence. I feared not only the risk of Georgia killing an innocent man, but also the psychological toll it would exact on the prison workers who performed his execution. "No one has the right to ask a public servant to take on a lifelong sentence of nagging doubt, and for some of us, shame and guilt," we wrote in our letter.

The men and women who assist in executions are not psychopaths or sadists.

They do their best to perform the impossible and inhumane job with which the state has charged them. Those of us who have participated in executions often suffer something very much like post-traumatic stress. Many turn to alcohol and drugs. For me, those nights that weren't sleepless were plagued by nightmares. My mother and wife worried about me. I tried not to share with them that I was struggling, but they knew I was.

I didn't grow up saying, "I want to work in prisons." I had never even been in a prison or a jail before I became warden of the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison. The commissioner at the time hired me to revamp the system, to implement case management, and work with inmates to make them safer. I had always worked in helping professions, and my main goal in corrections was always to reduce recidivism, so that inmates would leave prison better than they arrived. Over this course of time, the death penalty figured larger and larger into my work. I never supported it, but I also did not want to let it distract me from improving overall prison conditions. Death-row inmates are, after all, only a tiny fraction of the prison population.

When I was required to supervise an execution, I tried to rationalize my work by thinking, if I just save one future victim, maybe it is worth it.

But I was very aware of the research showing that the death penalty wasn't a deterrent. I left my job as corrections commissioner in Georgia in 1995 partially because I had had enough: I didn't want to supervise the executions anymore. My focus changed to national crime policy and then to academia, where I could work to improve the criminal-justice system without participating in its worst parts. Today, I am the dean of the College of Justice & Safety at Eastern Kentucky University.

Having witnessed executions firsthand, I have no doubts: Capital punishment is a very scripted and rehearsed murder. It's the most premeditated murder possible. As Troy Davis' execution approached — and then passed its set hour, as the Supreme Court considered a stay — I thought of the terrible tension we all experienced as executions dragged into the late hours of the night. No one wanted to go ahead with the execution, but then a court stay offered little relief: You knew you were going to repeat the whole process and execute him sometime in the future.

I will always live with these images — with "nagging doubt," even though I do not believe that any of the executions carried out under my watch were mistaken. I hope that, in the future, men and women will not die for their crimes, and other men and women will not have to kill them. The United States should be like every other civilized country in the Western world and abolish the death penalty.

Newsweek/Daily Beast Company

Allen Ault is the dean of the College of Justice & Safety at Eastern Kentucky University.

Please check out my website http://www.southerninjustice.net

Innocent and Executed - Please Read