Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker.

Today's program is from our archives, and it examines the idea of freedom, how it's achieved,

and how it is taken away.

Speaking to me in 2014 on a visit to London, my guest had a special insight into the ultimate denial of freedom, that is,

state-sanctioned execution. Alan Alt was, during the 1990s, the head of corrections in the

American state of Georgia. He was responsible for running the machinery of death. Mr. Alt didn't just order others to carry out

executions. He felt it was his duty to be present as those executions were carried out. But after

watching a handful of the state's most serious criminals being strapped into the electric chair,

he decided he could stomach it no more.

He left his post and became a campaigner against the use of capital punishment in the United States.

What prompted that momentous change of heart?

And is the death penalty itself doomed to extinction?

It's back in the 1990s that you were the Commissioner of Corrections in the U.S. state of Georgia, and you were responsible for running the machinery

of capital punishment. Is that experience still with you today? It is still here.

I still have nightmares, not every night, but on occasion I still have nightmares about it.

It's still a very hard pill to swallow, and it stays in your psyche for, I guess, forever.

It's the most premeditated murder possible,

but the manual is about that thick

and the preparation that you go through to execute someone.

Well, I can tell from your words already

that this is seared into your soul, this whole experience.

So let us start at the beginning and figure out how on earth you got yourself involved

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