O. B. Ellis Unit (E1, previously Ellis I Unit[1]) is a Texas Department of Criminal Justice prison located in unincorporatedWalker County, Texas,[2] 12 miles (19 km) north of Huntsville. The unit, with about 11,427 acres (4,624 ha) of space, now houses up to 2,400 male prisoners.[3] Ellis is situated in a wooded area shared with the Estelle Unit, which is located 3 miles (4.8 km) away from Ellis.[4] From 1965 to 1999 it was the location of the State of Texas men's death row.
The unit opened in July 1965.[3] It was named after Oscar B. Ellis, a former prison director of Texas.[5]George Beto designed the unit, making it to be the strictest prison in the system, and Jim Estelle, the following prison director, continued the course of action Beto established.[6]
From 1965 to 1999 the unit housed the male death row, which had moved from Huntsville Unit.[7] Michael Berryhill, an author, said "You had the toughest convicts, and the general philosophy was you needed the toughest warden. Wallace Pack was assigned to keep the lid on Ellis. The inmates in the prison were restless. There were work stoppages and strikes, and with Judge Justice's opinion, there was an air of expectancy that the brutality and terrible conditions would end."[6] The book In This Timeless Time includes content about the unit's death row.[8]
In April 1981, Eroy Brown, a prisoner who had been convicted of armed robbery and burglary, drowned Wallace Pack, the warden, and shot Billy Moore, the unit's farm manager, during a struggle for Pack's gun. Brown said that they were planning to kill him since he was going to expose a prison theft scheme. Thirty-five of 36 jurors voted in Brown's favor.[6]
After a prisoner named Rodney Hulin fatally injured himself at the Clemens Unit, he was transferred to the Hospital Galveston Unit and then the Ellis Unit. Hulin died in the Ellis Unit in 1997.[9]
In November 1998,[10] six condemned men were absent from their cells for several hours and then coordinated an escape attempt.[11] One of the men, Martin Gurule (TDCJ# 999063[12]),[10] successfully escaped and was later found dead in a location near the prison grounds.[13] TDCJ officials said that he drowned on the day of his escape.[14] According to the TDCJ, the prison escape attempt had hastened the agency's decision to move death row inmates to a new location.[13] TDCJ officials also stated that overcrowding at Ellis was another factor in the death row move.[15]
Six months after the escape attempt, the TDCJ decided to move the death row.[11] The Texas Board of Criminal Justice approved the relocation of the men's death row on Friday May 21, 1999.[15] In 1999 the male death row was relocated to the Polunsky Unit (originally known as the Terrell Unit) in West Livingston, Texas. The first 55 inmates, all classified as being disruptive, were moved on Friday June 18, 1999.[16] The death row transfer, which took ten months, was the largest transfer of condemned prisoners in history and was performed under heavy security.[10]
In 2011 the Ellis Unit furniture and wood plant was moved to the Lewis Unit.[17]
As of 2022[update] the prison sometimes had temperatures over 90 degrees Fahrenheit since there were no tempered air systems nor air conditioner units.[16]
When the unit housed the male death row, condemned inmates worked in a garment factory, played basketball, assisted each other with legal work, and worshiped together. The prison guards allowed other offenders to gather and say goodbye to a death row inmate on the night before his execution. According to death row offender Jonathan Bruce Reed (Texas Department of Criminal Justice Death Row #642,[18] now TDCJ#1743674 due to a reduction of the sentence to life imprisonment on November 3, 2011[19]), the attitude of the death row was "We can afford you some sort of reasonable life—within security confines" and that death row inmates "lived as humans". Reed said that condemned inmates sometimes violated the rules by smoking, getting tattoos, making wine, and engaging in sexual intercourse with other inmates and officers. Privileges decreased as years passed.[20]
The cells at Ellis's death row had bars on them. Sometimes there were two death row inmates per cell. Inmates were permitted to watch televisions located in the facility.[16]
Steve Earle recorded "Ellis Unit One" for the 1995 film Dead Man Walking. The song's lyrics focus on the effect of the death penalty on the guards that carry it out. Earle has been a vocal critic against the death penalty.[21][22]
Notable prisoners
Death row prisoners
Former Texas-sentenced inmates (all death row inmates on this list had been transferred to Polunsky Unit in 1999, commuted, released, and/or executed)
Juan Garza - on July 13, 1999, federal authorities moved Garza, who had committed the crime in Texas but was under a federal death sentence, out of the custody of the TDCJ and into Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) custody.[12] Garza was one of three condemned inmates moved from the Texas state male death row on that day due to the opening of the new federal death row wing in USP Terre Haute, Terre Haute, Indiana.[56] (executed in Terre Haute June 19, 2001)
Sherri Jarvis, a long-unidentified murder victim believed to have been searching for the Ellis Unit according to two unrelated witnesses who had met her the day before she was killed.
^"Anthony Charles Graves". Texas Department of Criminal Justice. December 10, 2001. Archived from the original on December 10, 2001. Retrieved August 16, 2019.
This list is incomplete. The Ellis Unit and W.J. Estelle Unit prisons have "Huntsville, Texas" street addresses but are north of the city limits. Karolyi Ranch has a "Huntsville, Texas" street address but is southest of the city limits.
