Editor’s Note: The Texas Observer sought TDCJ responses to this essay, which were incorporated into the piece in appropriate places with the author’s approval.
Author Bio: Xandan Gulley is a transgender (he/him) individual incarcerated under the legal name Britney Gulley in Texas who has spent time in solitary because of his gender identity and activism. Some of Xandan’s published work can be found in LGBTQ Nation, Black Lipstick, The Advocate, San Francisco Bayview, Prism, and Texas Letters.
A team of troops in black with combative shields and helmets blitzed into the shower area looking like servicemen in an army on the battlefield. The sound of electricity sizzling and crackling broke the silence. The smell of burning flesh filled the air. An inmate, a mother, who is housed in solitary confinement for mental health illnesses in the Lane Murray Unit in Gatesville, was left cooking on the shower floor.
To me, it looked like the electric chair was officially back in the prisons.
It’s 2025 and for decades the electric chair has been obsolete in Texas prisons (It was last used in a 1964 execution). Chemicals, like those sprayed from gas cans or the lethal injection, have been used to harm, subdue, disable, and execute incarcerated people for over 40 years. Last year, I saw a transition start to take place inside the prison where I had been incarcerated. Chemical agents were being used less because guards now had Tasers, which deliver high-voltage but low-amperage electrical shocks.
Tasers have been touted by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) as a way to deescalate potentially violent situations in prison. Bobby Lumpkin, the director of TDCJ’s institutional division, heralded the acquisition of 450 Tasers in a September 2024 Facebook post. In response to a staff survey, the agency posted it “spent approximately $3 million on new equipment for correctional officers across the state. Gloves, flashlights, redesigned thrust vest[s] and air vests have been purchased to increase the safety of our officers. TDCJ is also deploying body cameras and Tasers to 23 maximum security facilities.” Tasers are supposed to be nonlethal options for correctional officers, however, nationwide, Tasers have been connected with at least 927 deaths at the hands of police, according to the website Fatal Encounters.
“Please don’t hurt me, don’t touch me, get away from me!” screamed a 45-year-old woman, a mother, who has been incarcerated for over a decade and suffers from schizophrenia. Some days are good, some days are bad. Sometimes she’s coherent, some days she’s not.
On this particular day last year, she feared leaving the shower because she thought someone was trying to harm her. She hears voices and sees imaginary people. The officer on duty tried to calm her down. Her mental health counselors tried to persuade her that no one was out there or going to harm her. To no avail.
After about an hour of trying to get Timmons out of the shower, Senior Warden Audrey England seemed frustrated. In my experience, this warden, who was later transferred to another prison, is known for having a short fuse and has had civil suits filed against her by incarcerated people, according to my own institution’s law library. (England’s transfer was “unrelated to complaints,” Amanda Hernandez, a spokesperson for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice told the Texas Observer via email.)
In my cell upstairs, I stood at my door watching through the mesh window in horror as the altercation played out in slow motion below.
“Get this dumba** out of here! Run a team,” I thought I heard the warden say.
“Run a team” means suit up for combat. The team, which were mainly male officers, raced into the shower where the woman in crisis was naked. They were carrying Tasers and batons and after deploying those weapons left her on the floor, cooking like a steak on a grill. It was the first time I saw or heard a Taser used in prison.
After hours of being left on the shower floor, Timmons was hogtied with shackles and dragged to her cell naked by male officers. Burn marks could be seen where the prongs from the Tasers roasted her skin. The smell of seared flesh filled the air.
A Taser comes in multiple forms, including a gun that shoots out electrical prongs that attach and stick to the human skin, which shocks and burns the victim. There is also a police stick, which is about a forearm-length baton, has electrifying prongs on the tip, and once pressed to its targets shoots out electricity with the same effect as the gun.
Hernandez, the TDCJ spokesperson, confirmed via email that, “There are Tasers assigned to every TDCJ facility, including the Murray Unit.” Tasers were deployed in January 2024 and Taser/body camera combos were deployed at 23 facilities in June 2024. She said that TDCJ “does not use Taser batons or Taser rifles.”
Before Tasers were introduced, this situation would have been somewhat different, but the violence and malicious treatment would’ve remained. Timmons would’ve been sprayed with gas or pepper spray and the shower area filled with a reddish-orange mist that turns the atmosphere smoky, with an acidic smell. Those around who don’t have protective gear on (gas masks) can suffer symptoms such as choking, temporary loss of sight and smell, coughing and/or regurgitating. Timmons probably would have had a nosebleed with burning eyes, but she also could’ve collapsed.
(TDCJ’s General Rules of Conduct do not mention Tasers or stun guns, though its use of force policy says: “Employees shall employ only the minimum amount of force applied in compliance with existing policies and necessary to achieve the desired results. The use of force to intimidate, coerce, punish, or for the purpose of revenge is prohibited.” Hernandez said that officers who use Tasers are required to follow the agency’s Behavioral Intervention Plan, and to report it if they use Tasers. “Use of force reports are completed upon deployment of Tasers. These reports are submitted to unit administration and regional offices,” she wrote.)
In solitary confinement, many prisoners suffer from mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, bipolar, and psychosis that are exacerbated by prolonged isolation. Those suffering from schizophrenia and other mental diseases are target practice for the Tasers on a daily basis. Timmons is not the only inmate who has been subjected to this violation. Mentally ill prisoners are being punished for their mentally diseased conditions, penalized with taser assaults, and cooked with an electric chair gun.
The so-called modification was in fact an enhancement to prisoner brutality. Legal assassination to incarcerated people who are imprisoned with mental diseases that are untreatable in solitary confinement, are being mistreated unfairly and scourged with Tasers as punishment for their mental health illnesses. This is unconstitutional and inhumane.
TDCJ is a system of callous dehumanization. TDCJ can legally crucify prisoners. Its punitive measures are torturous and insensible. How far is too far when it comes to obstruction of justice?
Months after the assault, Timmons has not been the same. She’s reticent, timid, and shifty. She doesn’t smile, she doesn’t talk to anyone, she’s mistrustful and she doesn’t come out of her cell at all.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
