M. Watt Espy, Jr.: America’s
Greatest Death Penalty Archivist
Major
Watt Espy, Jr., was born in
Dothan,
Alabama on March 2, 1933.
He grew up seven miles down the road in
Headland, where his father was the President and CEO of Headland National Bank,
President of the Espy Mercantile Company, a large land owner, and a farmer.
Espy served in the U.S. Navy in
Morocco during the Korean War in the early 1950s,
and after his honorable discharge he attended the
University of Alabama
for two years before returning to Headland to work in the family’s store.
For the next two decades he supported himself
by selling encyclopedias and cemetery plots, among other things.
In the late 1960s he was the proprietor of an
antique store, first located in
Troy,
Alabama, and later in
Birmingham.
Around 1970, Espy began collecting information on legal executions in
the U.S., and he soon vowed to attempt to collect information on each and every
execution in American history.
At
the time, most authorities thought there had been around 7,000 executions in
American history,
about
1/3 of what Espy now estimates to be the true figure.
To free up time for the research, he closed
the antique shop.
With no paid
employment and mounting research expenses, Espy found his dedication to the
work resulted in a lifetime of poverty.
Often
Espy would travel to courthouses and local history libraries to collect
information.
Often the only
documentation for executions of slaves was a payment made by the state to the slave
owner to compensate for the destroyed “property” (i.e., the slave’s economic
value).
He spent countless thousands of hours reading
newspaper microfilms, and transcribing by hand or with a manual typewriter articles
about executions to avoid having to pay expensive photocopying costs.
He also purchased a massive collection of
Detective Magazines.
When William Bowers
in 1974 published what he thought was a complete list of all executions in
America,
Espy
was able to send him some 2,000 corrections and updates.
He wrote hundreds of letters to libraries,
historians and organizations throughout the
U.S., seeking information.
One of the organizations he wrote to in the
mid-1970s was the American Civil Liberties Union in
New York.
His letters to the ACLU
fell into the hands of the Director of their Capital Punishment Project, Henry
Schwarzschild (1926-1996), a man who stands second to none on the list of
contributors to the anti-death penalty movement in the last half of the
twentieth century.
To say the least, Schwarzschild was curious
about who this
Alabama
native was who was so interested in the death penalty.
In 1976, he arranged to meet Watt in Headland.
Schwarzschild was immediately struck by Espy’s
work, his impeccable data collection methods, his persistence, and his
knowledge.
He quickly realized the
importance of the project.
And so he
began to call friends at the
University
of Alabama, and convinced
them to hire Espy as a clerk in the library at the University of Alabama Law
School.
Consequently, in August 1977,
Espy and his collection moved 200 miles northwest to
Tuscaloosa, where he made his home for the
next 8 ½ years.
Until his death in 1996, Schwarzschild was
Watt Espy’s strongest supporter.
We
would not be here tonight honoring Watt Espy had it not been for the invaluable
support that Watt received from Henry.
Upon
moving to
Tuscaloosa,
Espy named his work the “Capital Punishment Research Project.”
From the start, the University was interested
in finding ways to support the work, and staff there decided to approach the
National Science Foundation for funding.
Their first attempt, which would have located the project in the History
Department, was unsuccessful.
Then, the University
approached Professor John Smykla,
and asked whether he would write a revised proposal that would locate the
project in the Department of Criminal Justice.
This revision was successful.
In
1984, the National Science Foundation gave the
University of Alabama
$188,000 to prepare a computer database of Espy’s records.
The
grant was originally planned for two phases.
However, from the start, Espy thought that the students hired to
computerize the data were doing a sloppy job and not respecting the integrity
of the data.
Three by five cards, on which
Espy had painstakingly typed information about each case, were misfiled after
they were coded.
Watt overheard students
ridiculing him, and on several occasions got into various disputes with Professor
Smykla over issues relating to proper handling and coding of the data.
Most importantly, Espy realized that the data
were being quantified in a haphazard fashion, resulting in an unreliable
product.
Rather than sit back and
tolerate this, on October 31, 1985, he left
Tuscaloosa and took all his data back to
Headland.
He has never talked with Professor
Smykla since, and still resents the way that he feels he and his data were
treated.
By this time, Espy had confirmed some 14,500
executions.
Without
Espy or his records, the University was up a creek and was forced to cancel the
second phase of the grant. Because of
this, today we have only partial information on the 14,500 executions that Espy
had confirmed prior to leaving the University.
Most importantly, information on the race and ethnicity of the victim in
homicide cases is not included in the database.
Only because of Watt’s love for the University and his respect for the
data was the project saved. At this
point, Watt invited me to act as a mediator or middle-man, and so on March 7,
1986, he and I travelled to Tuscaloosa and met
with Dr. Robert Wells, Assistant Vice President for Research at the University of Alabama, to figure out how to correct
the many errors in the data file. We
agreed that Watt would do this from Headland, and that his salary would be
doubled – to $15.00 per hour. Arrangements
were made so that Dr. Wells acted as the go-between. Professor Smykla and his assistant sent hard
copies of what had been coded to Dr. Wells, who sent it to Watt, and Watt
returned it to Wells after making hand-written corrections.
I
remember walking into the Law
School that day with Watt
and marveling at how many people came up to greet him and welcome him
back. I watched as he shook hands with an
Alabama
supreme court justice who had an office in the building, as he greeted several
other faculty and staff members, and exchanged hugs and compliments with
several African American housekeepers.
Clearly this was a man who was loved and respected by those in the Law School. To this day, Watt has nothing but good things
to say about the University of Alabama Law School, especially Deans Thomas Christopher
and Charles Gamble, and Professors Wythe Holt and George Taylor.
On
September 9, 1986, I wrote to Vice President Wells and reported that Watt was
finding coding errors in 11.2 percent of the data points.
Watt slowly reviewed every case, finishing
the work on April 1, 1987.
The first
edition of the database included all executions in the
U.S. confirmed by Watt before he left
Tuscaloosa in October 1985, plus new executions in the
U.S. between
then and July 7, 1987, giving a total of 14,570 cases.
Back
in Headland, Watt resumed his self-supported work.
He lived in an old weather beaten duplex at
100 Main Street.
His office, in the dark living room, was decorated
by pictures of well over 200 executed inmates, and he enjoyed telling visitors
the story of each one (and many more not pictured).
Watt’s chain smoking left the walls yellow, a
contrast especially visible when one of the pictures was tilted.
Because the house was not air-conditioned,
the blinds were kept closed, and Watt often worked in the warm summers while
dressed in pajamas.
He never seemed to
mind the countless cockroaches that shared the house with him.
Most important to him was Danny Mock, his
close friend and housemate for thirty years, who cooked for Watt and looked
after him until being incarcerated for selling drugs in 1998.
More than one visitor saw similarities
between Watt and Boo Radley in
To Kill a
Mockingbird.
Nor
did Watt mind enjoying a few beers while he was working. He now realizes that he has been an alcoholic
for his entire adult life. In 1990 he
joined Alcoholics Anonymous and has not had a sip since. Five years later he quit smoking. Indeed, for as long as Watt’s health
permitted during the 1990s, he was quite active in AA chapters, including some
that met in local jails.
I
visited Watt many times after his return to Headland, sometimes accompanied by
Margaret Vandiver, now at the
University of Memphis.
In December 1985 he went to
Gainesville to speak in one of my
classes.
In 1986 he spoke at the
meetings of the American Society of Criminology in
Atlanta.
In July 1987 Henry Schwarzschild and I spent two days in Headland,
trying to figure out how to photocopy the collection to protect it from natural
hazards or vandals (another failed effort).
Watt does not like airplanes, and the only
times that I remember him being on one was to travel to speak at San Francisco
State University Law School in October 1986 and at the meetings of the National
Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty in Seattle in 1991.
During
those years back in Headland, many scholars
from around the country joined Margaret and me in trying to find funding for
Watt, or a responsible buyer for his collection.
He tried to charge small fees for writing or
consulting, but none of this resulted in a decent or dependable income.
Our attempts to move the collection – and
Watt – to
Gainesville were not successful, but
among those I spoke to about it was University of Florida History Professor
Kermit Hall, who continued to see the value of this and similar collections
through the time of his service as president here at the University at
Albany.
At one point Washington and
Lee Law School expressed some interest in housing the
collection, and I pursued a hope to have it housed at
Tuskegee, all to no avail.
By
January 1, 1986, Espy had confirmed 14,573 executions. After leaving Tuscaloosa he was able to confirm nearly
4,500 additional cases. By January 8,
1995, the date of the last tally that I have in my files, he had counted 18,935
confirmed executions in American history.
When
Espy began his work he stood in favor of the death penalty, but that opinion
quickly changed.
One reason for this change was a realization
that executions are no more effective as a deterrent than long-term
imprisonment.
In 1985, Espy published an
article in the
Atlanta Constitution
documenting numerous cases where family members of executed inmates committed
their own capital offenses after their loved ones had been put to death.
He also wrote about cases where former
hangmen, law enforcement officials, or criminal attorneys who had firsthand
knowledge of the threat of the death penalty were not deterred and themselves
committed capital offenses.
By
the mid-1990s, diabetes was taking its toll on Watt, reading became more
difficult, and he became increasingly housebound. These health problems forced him into
retirement. In 2000 his family purchased
a small home for him next to the Headland elementary school and employed
caretakers to look after him and his dog, Missy. Before long his leg muscles began to atrophy
from lack of use, and he became completely bedridden. His files and books were stored in a rented
garage in Headland. A new collection
became more important in his life than his collection of execution stories: in
his home today are some 2,000 movie videos.
As has been true throughout his adult life, he considers himself to be
quite religious.
In
January 2008, Charlie Lanier from Albany, Margaret Vandiver from the University
of Memphis, and long-time Florida death penalty investigator Terry Farley Walsh and
I traveled to Headland to pack up Watt’s collection for transport to Albany. His family by then employed caretakers 24 hours
a day, as Watt could not get out of bed unless lifted or carried. But his mind is as sharp as ever. He has always been very interested in politics,
and as we meet tonight he is rooting for a John McCain victory in November.
Watt Espy is a true autodidact: a man
with little college training who became
America’s top death penalty
archivist, and did it largely without compensation or prestige.
As Professor Victor Streib once observed, “He’s
an undisputed gem.”
And now, thanks to the dogged efforts of
Charlie Lanier and his colleagues here in
Albany,
Espy’s work will be available for study by future generations of death penalty
scholars.
See, e.g.,
Marvin L. Kay & Loren Lee Cary, 'The
Planters Suffer Little or Nothing': North
Carolina Compensations for Executed Slaves, 1748‑1772,
Science and Society 40 (1976): 288‑306.
For example, on March 27, 1991, Espy wrote an “open
letter” denouncing a chapter written by Professor Smykla and demanding that it
be withdrawn: Victoria Schneider & John Ortiz Smykla, A Summary Analysis of Executions in the United States, 1608-1987: The
Espy File, pp. 1-19 in Robert M. Bohm (ed.), The Death Penalty in America: Current research (1991). Professor Smykla today remains a
well-respected criminologist. My intent
here is to focus on Watt Espy and report his perceptions, not to resolve the
Espy-Smykla disputes.
Bruce Krasnow, Chronicler
Spends Life with Death, Florida
Times-Union (Jacksonville),
Dec. 1, 1986. As Streib noted in the Preface and Acknowledgements of his 1987
book on the death penalty for juveniles, “Two individuals deserve special
mention. One is a recognized giant in the field of death penalty research,
Watt Espy. He generously opened his files to me originally when I sought
to identify each juvenile execution and has remained a loyal and priceless
contributor to this research ever since. Along with so many other death
penalty researchers, I have achieved this level in my research only by standing
on the shoulders of Watt Espy.” Victor L.
Streib, Death Penalty for Juveniles x (1987).
Here's the book where I got a lot of quotes I ended using to make those cards.
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