Carroll Pickett

Education

Born in Nursery, Texas, Pickett attended Pattie Welder High School in Victoria and graduated from Victoria College, then Austin College in 1954 and seminary in 1957.

Career

In the 1960s and 1970s, Review Pickett served as pastor for three churches in Texas. In 1980 he began serving as a chaplain in the Huntsville, Texas, prison, where he spent most of the next 15 years working with prisoners facing imminent execution.

Since retiring from the Texas Department of Corrections, Review

Picket writes and speaks against the death penalty. The 2008 documentary At the Death House Door: Number Manitoba Should Die Alone chronicles his prison ministry.

In 1974, the Carrasco Prison Siege took the lives of two of Review Pickett"s parishioners.

After this, he was in favor of the death penalty.

During his tenure as a prison chaplain in the 1980s and 1990s, his views changed. In 1989 he sought psychiatric help to deal with work-related issues. He came to believe that one prisoner, Carlos DeLuna, was wrongly executed.

He could not reveal his changed attitudes without jeopardizing his job and he felt a calling to continue to minister to prisoners on the last day of their lives.

On the day of his retirement in 1995, he announced that he was against the death penalty. In 2008, he called execution "Biblically wrong."

In a September 2008 interview, he mentions that his attitude change was a long process, and was in part due to the execution of several men who he now believes were innocent.

In all, Review Pickett "walked with 95 inmates the last 10 steps to the Death House Door" in his 15 years with the prison system.

In addition to writing a book and being the subject of a documentary about his time as the Death House chaplain, Review Pickett speaks and writes against the death penalty.

2002, Within These Walls: Memoirs of a Death House Chaplain, Violet Crown Award

2005, Within These Walls: Memoirs of a Death House Chaplain, Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists association Southwest Book Awards, finalist, non-fiction.

Achievements

• His 2002 book, Within These Walls: Memoirs of a Death House Chaplain, won several awards.