March 05, 2010

GREENWOOD — No one knew more about operating a gas chamber than Donald Hocutt.

The former Mississippi state executioner and longtime Greenwood resident learned from mixing the lethal chemicals together for four executions from 1983 to 1989.


“He just became the greatest expert — probably in the world — of running the gas chamber,” said Ivan Solotaroff, who wrote a book in 2001 about the death penalty that featured Hocutt extensively.


Hocutt, 55, died of heart failure Monday at his home in Tillatoba. Services will be at 2 p.m. Saturday at Williams and Lord Funeral Home in Greenwood, funeral home officials told The Associated Press.


An Indianola native, Hocutt was born in 1954, the same year the gas chamber was installed at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman.


He began working at the prison in the 1970s.


Don Cabana, who was warden at Parchman during Hocutt’s tenure, said Hocutt put in many years of good service to the taxpayers.


“He did what he was paid to do and was proud of it,” Cabana said.


Solotaroff said the last badge of honor a Parchman guard could receive was to be made state executioner. It’s an official position set by state law for overseeing executions. The state executioner was appointed by the governor.


Before the execution of Jimmy Lee Gray in 1983 — the first time the state’s gas chamber had been used in 19 years — a representative from the company that originally installed it came to Parchman and instructed Hocutt on the operation of the complicated device, Solotaroff said.


After that, Hocutt became an expert on its use, and he would be consulted by authorities in other states that used gas chambers. Hocutt never pulled the switch during an execution, but “he ran everything,” said Solotaroff.


In a 2001 interview with the Commonwealth, Hocutt said he had no regrets about the executions he was involved with. Since the death penalty is supposed to be a deterrent to crime, it should be discussed more publicly, especially with young people, he said.


“(Executions) should be played up more instead of hidden in a cloak of secrecy,” Hocutt said then. “I don’t support public executions, but there should be more made of it.”


Hocutt retired from Parchman in 1995.


The Legislature removed the gas chamber as an option for executions three years later. Subsequent executions in Mississippi have been performed by lethal injection.


Hocutt also owned an agricultural contracting company and was a member of the Delta Riders Motorcycle Club.


Survivors include two sons and four grandchildren.

http://www.clarionledger.com/article...05028/1263/RSS