How the trigger feels

The Last Executioner: Memoirs of Thailand's Last Prison Executioner

By Chavoret Jaruboon with Nicola Pierce

Published by Maverick House, 2006

Available at most bookstores

Reviewed by Paul Dorsey

The Nation

Chavoret Jaruboon has a big heart, and that shouldn't be a surprise just because he's pumped bullets into 55 other people's hearts.

He won't like that line. He's meek about the job he did at Bang Kwan Prison and always abhorred the spotlight that invariably fell on it, whether in admiration or condemnation, it didn't matter.

It's been three years since "The Last Executioner" hit the shelves, but the publisher noticed we hadn't touched it and pointed out the oversight. It's a serious oversight to miss a book like this in Thailand. The central story is gripping, and it's also got history, sociology, psychology, good crime-case stuff, insider information on how the government works, and plenty of cautionary advice.

It's also got a lot of flaws, most of which could presumably have been fixed by Chavoret's co-author (or is it ghostwriter?), Nicola Pierce. What exactly her role here was is not at all clear, but the flaws are of the sort that her command of English surely ought to have overcome.

Chavoret says he learned English by listening to his dad's "Frank Sinatra and Eddie Williams" records. It's doubtful he meant either of the jazz musicians by the latter name, so who's he talking about, the very obscure Eddie Williams and the Crusaders? If you Google "Sinatra Eddie Williams", the search turns up Google's online version of this very book! Surely a ghostwriter-editor-assistant writer should have sorted this out.

http://books.google.co.th/books?id=X4aKNQ_uqVYC&hl=en

A worthwhile editor-helper could have also goosed up the drab passages, although, arguably, they might feel they have to let the author speak in his "own voice" and tell the story in his own words. Chavoret is certainly capable of spinning a good yarn, but the book, overall, sags against amateurish template. Letting it rest there just seems lazy.

Not to worry -- what a story he's got to share, once you get past the humdrum chapters on his youth, enlivened only by his stints as a teen doorman in Patpong and as a rock guitarist in the cheesy cafes around US military bases. These episodes merely serve as an excuse to natter on rather pointlessly about prostitution, the Vietnam War and the music business, but finally, about 100 pages in, we get to attend an execution.

It's 1972, and young prison guard Chavoret is witnessing his first state-sanctioned killing. It's not pretty - a rapist-murderer, the spoiled son of a bigshot, refuses to go quietly. He's lashed into place with great difficulty.

The assembly line rolls on. Between the prisoner and the Bergmann MP 34/1 machine gun, a screen is inserted on which a square white cloth with concentric circles is pinned, denoting the position of the prisoner's heart. The gun adjuster calibrates the fatal angle and the executioner steps forward. He wais the supervisors and then the screened-off prisoner, ritually asking his forgiveness. Several rounds are discharged. The executioner swiftly departs. The doctor confirms death.

Chavoret describes all of this with awe and compassion, marvelling at "the gun stand that looked for all the world like a sewing machine" but infusing it with mystical properties while weaving in a theme of otherworldly separation. "The gun separated [Mui] from the rest of his colleagues ...

"I cannot say that anyone looked at him enviously. In fact we probably experienced a collective shiver of fear as he appeared temporarily lost to us and utterly focused on what he had to do.

"The white cloth suddenly looked very small and vulnerable while the gun appeared to grow in size, demanding all our attention. Its ugliness seemed to suck all the warmth and energy out of the room. I felt that even if Mui wanted to walk away the machine wouldn't let him. It was too late now for anything other than what was to happen."

This is riveting stuff, and there's much more.

Three toughs who pick pockets on buses but also routinely kill anyone who protests are caught and confess to robbery. Unknown to them, Prime Minister Thanon Kittikajorn has already ordered their execution without trial. You can imagine their surprise.

"An eye for an eye," Chavoret surmises. "Personally, I think that's the way it should be ... The death penalty is not the perfect solution but I cannot think of a perfect alternative. Some people are just evil to the core."

There are harrowing, moving, frightening sections, some involving the parents of the condemned, some involving ghosts.

At a 1977 execution the gun jams. A replacement is handy but it jams too. One of the guards decides to search the condemned man and finds a protective amulet hidden in his armpit. It's removed, and the gun works perfectly.

Chavoret doesn't linger on the spooky-spiritual aspect of this, noting only that the Bergmann used since 1934 was soon after retired and replaced with an HK MP-5, the weapon then used until lethal injections began in 2003. That's when Chavoret retires too.

Chavoret got his job pulling the trigger in 1984, initially as "second executioner" at Bt2,000 per kill, but other events quickly take centre stage in his account, dominated by the 1985 "riot" when 2,000 inmates seized a large segment of the prison for a day.

As an autobiography, this book doesn't rank highly. As a record of a career in the prison system it fares better. Its true value lies in its examination of the executioner's predicament, and in these passages its value is exceptional.

TEXT BITE: "Now, of course, [foreigners voluntarily visiting the foreign inmates] is nearly a fashionable or touristy thing to do. All these young people, full of ideals, who turn up to visit the foreign prisoners after watching 'Green Mile' or 'Dead Man Walking' and we have to cater for them. I think there are far too many of them but I suppose they don't cause any trouble."