After 25 years on Death Row, Phillip Workman faces execution a 6th time

A moratorium on inmate executions in Tennessee expires Wednesday and that's one week before convicted cop killer Phillip Workman's scheduled lethal injection.

This is the sixth time Workman has faced execution. But Phillip Workman is no stranger to the death chamber.

Though his life has been spared many times before, Workman says it's only a matter of time before he takes his last breath.

Surrounded by armed guards inside Tennessee's Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, Action News 5 reporter Janice Broach prepared to talk to Phillip Workman for the last time.

After 25 years on Death Row, Phillip Workman faces execution a sixth time next week.

"There isn't anyway to explain it except you've been taken captive by an enemy force and they tell you they are going to kill you and they come and get you periodically and they take you out and you think okay it's time to go, but then all of a sudden they say not yet and then they put you back," explains Workman.

Workman himself plays a big role in that scenario. Since the early 80's, attorneys for Workman have appealed his conviction for killing Memphis Police Officer Ronald Oliver outside a Wendy's restaurant in Frayser.

Workman says he robbed the restaurant but didn't kill Officer Oliver, "I've done the time for what I'm really guilty of."

Kelly Henry is Phillip Workman's attorney and she says Workman had six serious execution dates and been on death watch three times.

An inmate is placed on Death Watch days before an execution.

"Five guards in black come to your cell. They say, 'Okay, it's time.' They shackle you. All of your property has been boxed up," says Workman. "While you are there, your movements are recorded twenty-four seven. Everything you say or do is written in a log."

Workman says to go out for non-contact visits you have to be strip searched. He also says he thinks preparing to die is actually worse than death.

"It's an ever-looming feeling of are they going to get you this time." Workman adds. "It seems like at times it would be better off in the grave because I'm tired."

Phillip Workman says he does not want his family to witness his execution. He says it would be too difficult for him and for them, "I don't want loved ones around. Loved ones don't make you stronger. They make you weaker."

The state still has time to stay Workman's execution but Death Watch is just days away.

"If they don't get me this time, it's just a matter of a little more time," he says.

Time that Workman's attorney will spend fighting for her client's life.

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