History
The Terrell Unit opened in November 1993. At the time of its opening the public did not associate the prison with the death penalty, as the state's death row inmates were housed at the Ellis Unit in Huntsville. In November 1998 Martin Gurule, a death row inmate in the Ellis Unit, escaped. He drowned in a nearby creek and his body was found a week later.
After the incident occurred, the TDCJ considered moving the death row for men, and the Terrell Unit was the favored choice for the relocation. According to the TDCJ, the prison escape attempt had hastened the agency's decision to move death row inmates to a new location. Six months after the escape attempt, the TDCJ decided to move the death row. Polunsky took the death row inmates in 1999. The death row transfer, which began in March 1999 and took ten months, was the largest transfer of condemned prisoners in history and was performed under heavy security.
In February 2000 two death row inmates took a 57-year old female corrections officer hostage, forcing negotiations involving the warden. One of the hostage-takers, Ponchai Wilkerson (TDCJ#999011), was scheduled to be executed on March 14, 2000, and was, in fact, later executed on that date. The other, Howard Guidry, had no scheduled execution date. Guidry remains on death row.
On May 9, 2000, 33-year old death row inmate Juan Salvez Soria (TDCJ#837), who was scheduled to be executed on July 26, 2000, pulled the arm of 78-year old William Paul Westbrook, a prison chaplain from Livingston, into his cell. The offender tied a sheet around the chaplain's arm and tied the other end to a toilet; Soria began cutting Westbrook's arm with a razor blade. The offender nearly tore Westbrook's arm off. The authorities used tear gas to stop the attack. Authorities treated Soria's former cell as a crime scene and moved Soria to a more restricted area within the prison. Soria was executed on schedule.
The Texas Board unanimously approved giving former Terrell Unit its current name, Allan B. Polunsky Unit, on July 20, 2001. The board also voted to rename the Ramsey III Unit in Brazoria County, Texas to the Terrell Unit. The former namesake, a Dallas insurance executive named Charles Terrell, requested the name change because he did not want his name associated with death row because of questions about the administration of the death penalty. In addition he reportedly was ambivalent regarding capital punishment. In exchange, the former Ramsey III Unit was renamed the Terrell Unit.
In 2010, the TDCJ accused five men who were serving life sentences of attempting to break out of the unit. Robert Perkinson, author of Texas Tough: The Rise of America's Prison Empire, said in 2010 that Polunsky "probably" is "the hardest place to do time in Texas." Perkinson added that while the prison is not in a "gloomy" location and that the facility is not "dangerously dilapidated", the prison's "existential" "problem" is the fact that it is the state death row.
Read more about this topic: Allan B. Polunsky Unit
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