The Gambia May Beat America To Ending The Death Penalty

The Gambia May Beat America To Ending The Death Penalty

- Jillian Keenan

NO ONE WARNED ThankGod Ebhos that he was going to die that night, but he knew without words. For 19 years, as he suffered on death row in Nigeria’s notorious Benin Prison for the crime of armed robbery, Ebhos had waited for this moment. So when the sound of his cell door opening awoke him from a restless sleep on June 24, 2013, the smell of freshly oiled gallows told him what the prison guards did not.

Without a word, the guards forced Ebhos and four others out. All were set to die that night. Since he was No. 5, he watched as, one by one, each of the men before him gasped for life and died at the end of the executioner’s rope. (The prisoners were killed despite the fact that each had an appeal pending at the time.) When Ebhos was up, the guards put a black bag over his face, chained his hands behind his back, and tied a bag of sand to his feet. They put the noose around his neck.

Then someone spotted a clerical error. Unable to see through the black fabric, the rope still wrapped around his throat, he listened as the prison guards squabbled over the problem: Ebhos had been sentenced to die by firing squad, not hanging.