Reporting on executions

By: Mark Fitzgerald It's not 'routine'

There's nothing routine about executions, Mike Graczyk says, even though The Associated Press' Houston correspondent has crammed into the Huntsville Prison death chamber to witness the lethal injection of a prisoner more than 150 times.
"It bothers me when people say executions are getting 'routine,'" Graczyk said at the recent Society of Professional Journalists convention in Indianapolis. "You never know what's going to happen, and that's what makes it a good news story." Graczyk has seen condemned prisoners filibuster in their last remarks, scream obscenities, pray, and remain silent. One convict forever ruined "Silent Night" for Graczyk by singing the Christmas carol as his last words.
If executions are not routine, it can be said that Texas ? which has executed more than 180 convicts since restoring the death penalty in 1982 ? has the procedure down to a science. Executions are always carried out by lethal injection at 6 p.m. in Huntsville. By state regulation, Graczyk said, ap has one of three guaranteed spots inside a cramped death chamber with just enough room for several rows of three people standing shoulder-to-shoulder.
"If you aren't tall, you are going to have a problem seeing," the beefy Graczyk said.
In contrast to Graczyk, Lynn Ford has witnessed only one execution ? at the request of the condemned man. Gregory D. Resnover, sentenced to the electric chair for killing an Indianapolis policeman, asked Ford to be there because he liked the weekly column of The Indianapolis Star assistant lifestyle editor.
In Indiana, there is no statutory requirement for media to be present, Ford said. "There was some resentment that I was going to be there," he said. "Here I was, somebody who writes about a chocolate festival." He was also a reluctant witness. "Very selfishly, I didn't want to see it," Ford said. "The whole time I was waiting there, I kept hoping [then] Gov. Evan Bayh would stop it. I was scared to death." Ford's vivid account of the execution ? describing the sparks, the orange halo, and the smell of burning flesh ? is credited with convincing the state Legislature to replace the electric chair with lethal injection as Indiana's method of carrying out the death penalty.
As executions become more frequent, there may be "a kind of coverage fatigue," said Peter Y. Sussman, a Berkeley, Calif., writer who specializes in the issue of media access to prisons. Sussman argues that the very frequency of executions ? coupled with the many instances of exonerations of prisoners on Death Row and the streamlining of the judicial process ? makes it all the more important for the press to step up its coverage.
"If someone is innocent," Sussman said, "there is an increasing burden on the press to draw attention to that because, in fact, a person may not get his day in court."

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