Word: warden
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...does think that Ray got help in fleeing is Warden Stonney Lane of Brushy Mountain prison, who told TIME that he thought the break had been assisted by some authority within the institution. Said he: "They would have had to be helped." Whoever organized the plot shrewdly waited until Lane was far away in Corpus Christi, Texas, taking his first vacation in five years. Lane said Ray was the first man over the wall. "What I want to know is: Why wasn't he shot at? They shot the last one." And Lane was convinced that Ray and the others...
Nearby residents learned about the escape in the time-honored way: the siren began to wail. But with the phones out, Assistant Warden Clayton Davis had to send a man those six miles by car to report the escape to the sheriff in Wartburg. Capturing the wounded prisoner Ward was no problem; he was right outside the wall. Local roads were swiftly blocked off. But prison officials needed 45 minutes before they could organize a full-scale search. With six bloodhounds in the lead, a posse started after the group, which had disappeared in the direction of Frozen Head Mountain...
...each inmate is branded according to his place on this ladder. Either you're a "politician," which means you've got an in with the warden's office, or you have a "rep," which means people respect you because you wouldn't blink at busting a guy's head open. Or else you're a stoolie. And that means you better be getting a lot of protection from the wardens and the "screws," because with just a moment's diversion an enemy could split your skull and spill your brains with the edge of a metal toilet seat...
...prison life. But the play is really about the exigencies of power relations inside "the joint." Homosexuality, in Herbert's imaginary cellblock, just happens to represent the medium of influence. So when Queenie, one of the cellmates, throws his head back effeminately and announces, "The General (meaning the warden) has had me all over his carpet," he means more than the physical act--he is also implying that he pulls political strings. And when Smitty, a new inmate, arrives, Rocky's way of intimidating him as a political protege is to force him to surrender in the shower...
With that, the warden made a slight motion with his left hand, and a rifle volley shattered the silence. "Bang! Bang! Bang! Three noises," Witness Schiller reported later. Actually, four bullets tore into Gilmore's heart, twisting his body, which then turned limp. Blood slowly poured out, staining the bullet-pocked chair. Two minutes later, at 8:07 a.m. on Jan. 17, Gary Gilmore was declared dead. He was the first prisoner to be executed in the U.S. since 1967. After a series of unsuccessful appeals that lasted until the very morning of the execution, what the warden called...