“None of us ever enjoyed doing it. None of us wanted to do it.”

Hands shaking and palms drenched with sweat, he picked up a plastic tube connected to a man he did not know and slowly pushed into it the vials of drugs to stop his heart. Baxley did not look away as the lethal cocktail did its job. He watched as the light of life left the condemned man, whose head was on a gurney just a few inches in front of him. And then it was finished. Where there once was a face, there was suddenly just a corpse, left with a frozen expression of anguish.

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“Time of death, 6:18,” someone spoke into their radio. Baxley didn’t wait to hear more. Within seconds he was in a bathroom around the corner, ripping the gloves off and trying to wash himself clean. He scrubbed his hands hard and asked God to forgive him for what he had done. But it wasn’t enough…

A Southern Baptist who attended church every Sunday, Baxley became convinced that killing others for the government had condemned him to hell. He stopped going to services and started thinking about suicide. Once, as his wife begged him to stop from the other side of the door, he shot a pistol through a wall and imagined the bullet going into his body.

“I was in the Marine Corps, but what I’m saying, it doesn’t matter how tough you think you are,” said the 57-year old Midlands resident. “I was the carrier out of the state-assisted homicide. I always feel like I walk around with this.”

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