Since he retired at the end of 2017, after 43 years as a sportscaster with WSMV-TV, Rudy Kalis has been spending a lot of time in prison.
In particular, he's been making regular visits to Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, where he's become quite close to one death row inmate — Stephen West, the man who is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection in the electric chair on Thursday night.
West was moved to death watch shortly after midnight last night. Kalis is out of town due to a previous obligation, but was planning to talk to West on the phone. The two have been meeting at the prison at least twice a week for more than a year, and Kalis tells the Scene he knew he liked West right away.
“The minute I walked in and was with him, I liked him," he says. "I wanted to be with him, and he became a friend. He’s got a wicked sense of humor, he’s a humble guy. He’s a redeemed man.”
Kalis, who spent decades in the field of journalism, says he peppered West with direct questions and was moved by the honest answers coming back at him, including about the crimes that sent him to prison. West was sentenced to death for the the 1986 murders of Wanda Romines, 51, and Sheila Romines, her 15-year-old daughter. He was also convicted of raping Sheila. (West maintains that, while he raped Sheila, his accomplice, then-17-year-old Ronnie Martin, killed the women.)
Kalis says their conversations often involve faith. The former broadcaster started visiting prisoners through the prison ministry Men of Valor. But he says they discuss other things too, like West's love of University of Tennessee sports.
A couple weeks ago, Kalis was part of a group that met with Gov. Bill Lee about West's case. During his gubernatorial campaign, Lee highlighted his own involvement with Men of Valor and emphasized his interest in criminal justice reform.
“I could not pound him in any way," Kalis says of his conversation with the governor. "I literally said it is such a huge, difficult decision, and he said that he takes it so very seriously, that he prays about it and wants to make the right decisions. That’s all that I can ask. There’s a proverb in the Bible that says, Proverbs 22:1, it says ‘the king’s heart’ — or the governor’s heart — ‘is in the hand of the Lord, and he turns it whichever way he wishes.’ So all I did was say to him, ‘I can sense that this is so heavy on you.’ I said, ‘If I, as a man of faith, if it was my decision, because I’ve gotten to know him, I would give him life. I can’t beat you over the head as a governor, I just pray that you make the right decision.’”
Lee has not announced whether he will grant West clemency. He denied Don Johnson's request for mercy in May, allowing the first execution of his tenure to go ahead.
In West, who has taken up drawing flowers during his time on death row, Kalis says he's found the same gentleness that he sees on display during the Sunday night death row Bible study he leads.
“I know their brutal pasts, but I have to judge them on what I see," Kalis says. "From a biblical standpoint, Moses was a murderer, David was a murderer, the Apostle Paul was a murderer, and yet they were redeemed. So I’ve changed on the death penalty where I think the potential for redemption is there. But I’ve not had a daughter killed, I’ve not had a wife murdered. It is so difficult for the victims and their families.”
Most of the close family members of Wanda and Sheila Romines have died. But Eddie Campbell, a close friend of Wanda's husband and Sheila's father Jack until his death in 2008, told WBIR-TV last year about how the initial crimes, and the decades of legal back-and-forth since, weighed on the man who'd lost his wife and daughter.
"Jack would have done it himself if he could. He was never able to get over it. It devastated him his entire life. And he had to relive his wife and daughter's death over and over his entire life, every time there was another appeal or delay in West's execution. If you're going to have the death penalty, have the death penalty. If you are not going to have it, don't have it. But just make it one way or the other. Leaving families in limbo for 30 years is not how the justice system should work."
Now West, who has been treated in prison for severe mental illness, is in a small cell near the execution chamber. Absent an intervention from the governor, he has less than 60 hours left to live.
Update (Aug. 14): After this story was published, Stephen West decided to be executed in the electric chair rather than by lethal injection.
