Donald Jones was alone in a bare room. He had finished his meal of chicken strips, pizza, coleslaw, fries, and apple crisp with ice cream. Jones lay on the metal gurney, covered in a thin sheet. It was 10 a.m. on Wednesday morning. He was about to die.

On the other side of the glass window, his family was waiting. Sally Vavrek, his pen pal of eight years, stood among them as Jones was given the first of the three injections that would soon take his life.

“It wasn’t a peaceful death,” said Vavrek, 56, now a board member of Maryland Citizens Against State Executions (MD CASE). “I envisioned us holding hands and ushering him into the kingdom in a loving way. But it was just – an amusement park ride with a black light or something. With his mother screaming, he jumped off the gurney. It was just the most horrible, horrible few minutes you could even imagine,” Vavrek said.