Meigs , an unincorporated area in Montgomery County, Alabama , with a capacity to house over 1, inmates. Kilby serves as receiving and processing center for all male Alabama state inmates. In and , the State of Alabama constructed and opened Kilby Prison, located on 2, acres It was named in honor of Thomas Erby Kilby , governor of Alabama β Kilby prison was the site where Alabama executed prisoners who had been sentenced to death, and when in the s the method was changed from hanging to electrocution, an electric chair, " Big Yellow Mama", was constructed in Kilby.
The chair was built by a master carpenter, Ed Mason, a man born in London, England, who had been convicted of burglary; he was convicted of having broken into six homes in Mobile to pay off gambling debts. After being promised a furlough or perhaps even parole by Kilby's warden, T. Shirley, he built the chair 4-foot 1. Brandon , who he hoped would pardon him.
Mason was granted a furlough by Bibb Graves , Brandon's successor, and promptly left the state never to return. State engineer Harry C. Norman installed the electrical wiring; "once the switch was thrown, a prisoner would get a first fist-clenching jolt of power; the current would then reduce and automatically build back up to 2, volts for a second shot of electricity". A crown made of metal wire was fitted over the prisoner's head, with a wet sponge to conduct power, and a second, similar electrode on the lower left leg.
Norman was to execute the first victim, Horace DeVaughn, convicted of two murders, on April 8, , but refused and quit his job days before. DeVaughn was executed, but it took four shots of electricity to kill him. All were black. According to the Alabama Bench and Bar Historical Association, the majority of those executed in Alabama were black, and many lacked proper legal representation; others were mentally incompetent. Supreme Court debated the constitutionality of capital punishment, eventually overturning the death penalty nationwide in , resulting in every inmate condemned to death having their sentence commuted to life.
Deterioration after forty-five years led to the prison closing in The new Kilby was established as the Mt. Meigs Medical and Diagnostic Center in December and had an original capacity of inmates. Kilby was designed with an on-site hospital, dormitories, and one hundred two-man cells in order to facilitate its role as receiving center for all male prisoners held by the state of Alabama.
