22 1/2 Years On Death Row

Brian Haas: CROSSVILLE, Tenn. — Paul Gregory House says "Oh, well" a lot.

His mother says it's a quirk of his damaged brain. A sort of sigh, a mental reset, when his thoughts don't crystallize quickly enough.

He says it all the time, though — not least when contemplating a life that took him from death row in 1986, days away from electrocution at one point, to his mother's modest ranch home in Crossville, where she now feeds him and helps him go to the bathroom and get in and out of bed.

The quarter-century in between says a lot about capital punishment in Tennessee. As state officials makes an unprecedented push to execute prisoners — at least 10 are scheduled to die in the next two years —…