The woman leaned over to look into the man's face. The room was quiet aside from her prayers.
"You are a child of God," she told him. "You always will be."
He wasn't breathing anymore. But she kept on.
"Teach us, teach us, teach us how to love one another," she said.
She held his head in her hands and bent down to kiss the left side of his face. It was goodbye.
Later on, in the suffocating heat of Tennessee's long August, Diana Gallaher repeated the last words of Anthony Darrell Hines as she had heard them that morning. "Tell my son I love him," he said from the gurney inside Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.
His son had watched the scene, separated from the father he barely knew by a pane of glass. His hair hung in small braids
around his face, and he wore a heavy cross necklace. On his arm, a tattoo said "Believe."
As Hines' spiritual adviser, Gallaher was the person physically closest to him when he was executed by the state of Tennessee for the 1985 murder of Melissa Jenkins. In the days leading up to his scheduled death, she visited him.
Each person condemned to die in Tennessee is allowed a spiritual adviser. They are one of the few allowed to visit the inmate in the 14-day period leading up to the execution, known as death watch. At times, these advisers are everyday people who began by volunteering with prison ministry groups. Their lives are changed by what they find.
Since executions in the state were restarted in 2025, advisers have been allowed in the death chamber throughout much of the process. Sometimes they are a member of the clergy. Often, they are grappling with the same faith-related questions as the person inside prison walls.
After death, spiritual advisers walk out of prison and into their everyday lives. Despite the emotional weight of being there for someone's final moments, they believe it's an important role.
"I would rather not witness another death," said JR Davis, who has served as a spiritual adviser three times and might be asked again. "Will I? I guess I will."
The process that preceded the execution of Hines on Aug. 13 is happening now.
Christa Pike, 50, is scheduled to be executed Sept. 30 for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer. Her circumstances are rare. She is set to be the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years and would also be the state's only person executed for a crime committed at 18 years old since the death penalty was reinstated in 1977.
Pike will have a Buddhist teacher with her.
'Will you stand with me?'
On a sunny day in December 2025, Davis read a statement after witnessing the execution of his friend Harold Wayne Nichols. He was stoic, standing in a long dark overcoat and holding his face in a serious expression. He read from a poem Nichols had written before he died, about forgiveness and redemption.
Earlier that morning, Nichols had used his last words to apologize to the people he harmed. He was executed by lethal injection and pronounced dead at 10:39 a.m.
It was the third time Davis had watched someone die.
Davis met Nichols years earlier in a Bible study group he co-facilitates with Rudy Kalis, another volunteer who visits men on death row at Riverbend, known as Unit 2. The group started around 2018, but Davis started visiting prisons long before that.
One of his goals has always been to talk to inmates about God, but he's also interested in the lowered rates of recidivism that can come along with prison ministry and truly rehabilitative programs. Almost everyone in state prison, he stressed, will at some point be released.
He was apprehensive about visiting death row at first, in part because some people he knew who went in seemed to glamorize it or use their experiences for religious clout. But when some Unit 2 inmates needed a volunteer to lead Bible study, he agreed to take it on, alongside Kalis.
During his visits, Davis met a man named Stephen West. They began having weekly visits at West's request. During the visits, West would turn his body away from Davis, which was confusing. West would occasionally look toward him and say, "I just don't understand you, JR."
"And so I thought, 'This guy doesn't like me,'" Davis said. "Why does he keep insisting on coming here?"
One day, about six months into their visits, West's demeanor changed. They talked about everything.
Davis' voice broke as he brought up the memory.
West told Davis about his horrific upbringing, punctuated by severe abuse, neglect and rape. And he told Davis about the crime for which he was sentenced to die.
By West's telling, he and 17-year-old Ronnie Martin kidnapped 51-year-old Wanda Romines and her 15-year-old daughter, Sheila. West, 23 at the time of the crime, admitted to raping Sheila but said Martin stabbed the mother and daughter to death.
West was convicted of the kidnapping, the rape and first-degree murder. His co-defendant, a minor at the time of the crime, was convicted and imprisoned, but was not eligible for the death penalty.
Which version of the story was true, Davis still doesn't seem sure. But he saw West's remorse, and he knew of the terrible circumstances of his childhood, which attorneys argued stunted his brain development. It was enough for Davis to continue visiting with him as a fellow believer in Christ.
One day West asked Davis: "Will you stand with me when the state kills me?"
Davis said he would.
'Karmic outcomes'
Inmates' access to spiritual advisers and other religious rites around their time of death has been mired in legal battles in recent years. These disputes have played out during the time Davis has been visiting death row.
With the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Ramirez v. Collier, religious rights for the condemned were expanded. The court ruled that spiritual advisers could be inside the execution chamber and touch inmates while praying aloud.
In the ruling, justices urged states to update and streamline their protocols in order to allow inmates their religious freedoms in accordance with the First Amendment to the Constitution. But not all states have followed the directive.
According to data from the Death Penalty Information Center, Tennessee is one of eight states that have allowed spiritual advisers in the execution chamber with the condemned, while several other states, including Mississippi and South Carolina, have either not allowed spiritual advisers in the chamber at all or have restricted access in some way.
In Georgia, for example, execution protocol allows spiritual advisers to "administer to the spiritual needs of the condemned and to provide a prayer," but the adviser must leave the death chamber before the execution process begins. In Missouri, a Muslim man was denied access to his imam during his 2023 execution, according to a report from The Marshall Project.
Pike's request to have a Buddhist spiritual adviser present at her execution was Tennessee's first test of religious neutrality since the 2022 Supreme Court ruling. So far since the state resumed executions in 2025, each person put to death has had a Christian spiritual adviser with them.
At a court hearing in August, the issue was settled immediately when the prosecution and defense agreed to allow a Buddhist spiritual adviser in the death chamber in the same way that Christian advisers have been allowed.
In an interview conducted with WPLN, Pike's adviser Rev. Mikey Noechel said he and Pike plan to practice metta, or loving kindness meditation, in the lead-up to her execution.
"Christa’s dying," Noechel said during the radio interview. "That’s OK. That’s OK. Because we will all face the same fate. The way it’s done will have karmic outcomes. I’m not a fan of that."
He said that Pike hopes Slemmer's family feels better after she's dead and that she has taken responsibility for the crimes she played a part in.
"When we take responsibility, it gives us the empowerment to respond," he said. "I want this to never happen again. So, I want for Christa to be seen completely — her past, her present, possible futures — so we never have to experience murder on this level ever again."
'I made it'
Over his years leading the Bible study group, Davis heard all the men with execution dates say the same thing. They hope a legal challenge will cancel their date, or that the governor will respond to their plea for clemency.
"I'll either be here next Sunday, or I'll be looking over you," they say. So far, no one in the group has come back from death watch.
When it came time to stand watch with West before his execution by electric chair in 2019, Davis didn't know exactly what to expect.
They talked about near-death experiences, stories from people who saw a light or floated above their own body on an operating table. It was a topic that fascinates Davis, one he often discusses with his son.
From what he can gather, Davis said, "the passage between life and death is more like a dissolve edit. Your life dissolves from this life to the next, whatever it is."
West liked the thought of that.
"Steve, when it happens," Davis suggested, "why don't you put a zinger up my spine or something?"
"Well, I will if I can," West said.
On the day of the execution, West was strapped to the electric chair, and Davis watched from the witness room, separated by a pane of glass. Between the first jolt of electricity and the second, Davis thought to himself, "Well, you did it buddy."
He swears he heard West speak to him.
"Hey, JR. I made it."
'Come pray for the next one'
Davis described West's execution as barbaric.
"It became a black and white movie to me," he said. "Am I really watching what I'm watching?"
Both Davis and Kalis, the volunteer who helps lead the Bible study group, were discouraged after West's death, Kalis said. They weren't sure they were doing any good by leading the faith group.
It was Pervis Payne, an inmate on Unit 2, who convinced Kalis to keep going.
"No, keep coming back," Payne said. "Come pray for the next one."
Over many visits, in the group sessions and in one-on-one visits, Kalis and Payne grew close.
Payne was convicted in the 1987 murders of Charisse Christopher and her young daughter. He spent more than 30 years on death row and always said he was innocent.
Payne saw his execution date set and then canceled multiple times, including during the COVID-19 pandemic when executions were stopped.
Kalis would have served as Payne's spiritual adviser.
"That was tearing my heart out," he said.
Payne's death sentence was vacated by a Shelby County judge in 2021 after the Shelby County district attorney conceded that he has an intellectual disability and by law cannot be executed.
After almost 10 years of visiting the prison, Kalis still goes in every week, visiting both Payne and those who are still on death row.
There's some kind of power, or healing perhaps, Kalis explained, in the fact that someone in the world can look at the condemned and see something beyond the worst thing they ever did to another person. To see something besides an animal.
"They know I care," he said. "So I try to hold them accountable as I hold myself accountable. ... And despite what they did, I want them to have the hope that they can be forgiven."
While steadfast in his faith, Kalis is still emotionally affected by watching the men in his faith community be taken, one by one, to die. Davis is, too.
"But I know I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing," Kalis said. "So thereby, I'm expected, by my good Lord's help, to handle it."
'I know where I'm going'
When the second man asked Davis to be with him during his death, he wasn't sure why. Or how he ended up in this position. He said yes.
Lee Hall was in the faith group, too. He had lost most of his eyesight by the time his execution came, which was 28 years after he was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend Traci Crozier, who was 22.
"And of course, society says kill him, you know?" Davis said. "That's what it is."
While Hall was being prepared for his execution, Davis said, he couldn't see what was happening to him.
"He could hear the noises," Davis said. "I just saw him trying to figure out what they were doing."
"I think people can learn forgiveness and love and make the world a better place," were Hall's last words. "That's all I have to say."
Throughout the time Davis led the Bible study group, he got to know Harold Wayne Nichols, who was considered a steadfast and dependable member of the Unit 2 community. He participated in multiple optional groups about faith and making art. He wrote essays about ending the cycle of violence and poetry about showing grace to loved ones. He was the unit's maintenance man, a job reserved only for the most responsible inmates.
"He was funny, too," Davis said. "He always told jokes, usually at the beginning of the group. And they were all hilarious."
"He was a mass rapist," Davis added. He has difficulty squaring those two realities.
Nichols was sentenced to death for the rape and brutal beating of 20-year-old Karen Pulley in Chattanooga. Following her murder, he raped or attempted to rape at least 12 women during a three-month period.
He asked Davis to be his spiritual adviser.
"I don't want to put you on the spot and you might not want to," he said. "And you don't have to do it. But I'd like to ask you to be there with me."
"You're right," Davis said. "I don't want to do it. But yeah, I'll stand with you."
Every day for 14 days, Davis visited him.
In the execution chamber, while Nichols was lying on the gurney, Davis went over to him, leaned down and whispered, "I am shaking like a leaf."
"I'm good," Nichols replied. "I know where I'm going."
Molly Davis covers growth and development in Nashville and assists with special projects. You can email her with comments, questions and tips at mmdavis@tennessean.com.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: In Tennessee's execution chamber, spiritual advisers give last prayers
