At deaths door

It is no accident that the eyes of the world were on Texas in February when Karla Faye Tucker received capital punishment. Of the 73 prisoners executed last year in the United States, 37 died in Texas. That makes Texas the state where, according to some believers, biblical law is bravely carried out-but others protest. WORLD sent one of its correspondents to ground zero in the debate, Texas' Death Row at Huntsville prison, to describe some less-celebrated cases and the ongoing debate. | Les Sillars

The official name of Death Row in Texas is Ellis One, an imposing brown brick fortress 12 miles north of Huntsville, which is about 70 miles north of Houston.

The towers, chain-link fences, and pervasive presence of barbed wire give Ellis One an ominous air, but the staff members on Feb. 18 were surprisingly jovial. One female guard manning the security hut at the gate was hawking Girl Scout cookies to visitors.

After signing in, visitors were escorted into a long, brick-walled room in the administration building. The room has large windows, a battered Coke machine, and a painting of the Nativity scene. A counter runs the length of the room with about 20 hard wooden chairs lined up along it. Half-a-dozen inmates, locked in four-foot by four-foot cages, waited on the other side of the counter behind thick metal mesh and an 18-inch-high panel of reinforced plate glass at face level.