A snippet from Canon’s interview with Richard Glossip, who is under a stay of execution in Oklahoma:

Oklahoma officials discovered hours before Glossip’s scheduled execution that they had obtained the incorrect lethal injection drugs. Glossip is now one of the few to experience what leads up to execution—and lived to tell about it.

“It is real torture,” Glossip says over the phone from death row. He remains surprisingly upbeat throughout the conversation. “I think it is done to make you say, ‘Man, get me in that room and get this over with. Because it is hell. It really is.” For those 50-days, he says it was difficult to sleep without a reprieve from the constant harsh lighting. He hardly ate the food he describes as inedible and often forgot basic necessities like water. He struggled to cope under the constant gaze of the guard who was tasked with documenting his every move. “It really messes with your head,” Glossip shares. “I still look over my shoulder to see if someone is watching me.” Glossip explains that at times he would try to sit completely still on his bunk just so he could avoid witnessing the guard logging his last days alive. As time went by, teams of guards began rehearsing for Glossip’s execution as he watched from his cell.

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