The Free-Lancer

March, 1986

For the Louisiana state executioner, there are no ambiguities or second thoughts about his free-lance job. He pushes buttons. A Start button and a Stop button. The buttons control electrical surges to the electric chair at Louisiana's Angola Prison. In a matter of minutes, he leaves the prison, the task he has just completed a thing of the past."I never did dwell on things, I can just block things out," he says, and asks that he be called Sam, "Sam Jones."That is not his real...