Carroll Pickett

Carroll L. "Bud" Pickett (1933 – April 3, 2022) was a Presbyterian minister in Huntsville, Texas. In the 1960s and 1970s, Pickett served as pastor for three churches in Texas. In 1980 he began serving as a chaplain in the Huntsville, Texas, prison, where he spent most of the next 15 years working with prisoners facing imminent execution. After retiring from the Texas Department of Corrections, Pickett wrote and spoke against the death penalty. His 2002 book, Within These Walls: Memoirs of a Death House Chaplain, won several awards. The 2008 documentary At the Death House Door: No Man Should Die Alone chronicles his prison ministry.

Early life and ministry Born in Nursery, Texas, Pickett attended Pattie Welder High School He married Sonja Campbell of Victoria and raised 4 children. After divorcing, he married his second wife Jane in 1990.

Early in his career, he served a Presbyterian church in Sinton. After this, he was in favor of the death penalty. This was in direct conflict with the Presbyterian Church's established opposition to the death penalty.

During his tenure as a prison chaplain in the 1980s and 1990s, his views changed. In 1989 he sought psychiatric help to deal with work-related issues. He came to believe that one prisoner, Carlos DeLuna, was wrongly executed. He could not reveal his changed attitudes without jeopardizing his job and he felt a calling to continue to minister to prisoners on the last day of their lives. On the day of his retirement in 1995, he announced that he was against the death penalty. In 2008, he called execution "Biblically wrong." 2005, Within These Walls: Memoirs of a Death House Chaplain, PEN Southwest Book Awards, finalist, non-fiction

Publications Stowers, Carlton, and Carroll Pickett, Within These Walls: Memoirs of a Death House Chaplain, , St. Martin's Press, 2002, Google Books