SIOUX FALLS - The execution chamber in the South Dakota State Penitentiary sits empty and silent these days, a somber reminder that the state criminal-justice system is willing to kill the worst of its killers.

TV crews and newspaper reporters got a glimpse recently of the seldom-visited, rarely used room in one of the oldest sections of the prison, known locally as the "Old Pen." The state Department of Corrections offered a tour of the penitentiary to give reporters a look inside the correctional system that they usually cover from the outside only.

Penitentiary Warden Doug Weber and other corrections officials showed off the prison's inmate industrial arts complex and shop, the library and school, a remodeled chapel and exercise yards and cell blocks ranging from imposing quartzite structures 125 years old to the efficiently modern Jameson Annex, where the most dangerous inmates are housed.

Midway through the tour, Weber led the way through the prison infirmary and around a couple of corners to the execution chamber. And the otherwise chatty news group took on a subdued awkwardness in walking the final few steps taken last July by confessed killer Elijah Page.

"You can see he had a very short walk coming over here," Weber said, as he looked down the hallway between the execution chamber and the holding cell where Page spent his last three days.

Like others at the prison, the holding cell was a cramped, barred cubicle with an open toilet, sink and single bed. Fifteen or 20 feet down the hall, an oddly shaped gurney was the somewhat macabre centerpiece in the tile-floored room where South Dakota performed its first execution in more than 60 years.

The chamber is oddly situated just around the corner from a medical-records office for the prison's infirmary, where staffers chatted casually about their duties. And the closed-curtained rooms that held witnesses to the execution are now used for examinations and office space.

"That second door, that's where Bill and Carson were," DOC public information officer Michael Winder said, referring to Journal reporter Bill Harlan and Associated Press writer Carson Walker, who represented the news media as witnesses at the Page execution.

The familiar names of friends and colleagues revived some of the chatter that had faltered in the few moments in and near the execution chamber. But the news crews were keenly aware that three more men - Donald Moeller, Charles Rhines and Briley Piper - sit on South Dakota's death row, awaiting an end like Page's.

Regardless of personal feelings about capital punishment, that reality created a solemn atmosphere in the imposing room that South Dakota intends to use again.

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Contact Kevin Woster at 394-8413 or kevin.woster@rapidcityjournal.com