I was chief inmate clerk at a prison housing nearly three thousand convicts, and it was part of my duty to keep an up-to-the-minute record of the inmate population. When a new inmate arrived I was notified immediately, and when a prisoner was to be discharged I was notified in advance — with one exception. I received no notice of an impending execution, simply because no execution was ever a certainty until the condemned man was literally on his way from the death cell to the execution chamber. At that point the receiver would be lifted from the telephone on…