Execution witness
Kevin Fagan, a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle (and who once worked at the paper where I work), has seen six executions and has already requested media credentials for another one next month. Odds are fairly high that his eighth execution will be my first.Anyway, he wrote a column about why he watches executions, and he basically summed up most of my feelings about crime reporting, and the thoughts that went through my head when I first learned that I might really witness an execution. I haven't seen anywhere near the amount of crime and sadness and horror that Fagan has, but I feel I can say that I understand his column.
Roughly 10 years ago, some friends and I heard that the freeway was closed due to a big wreck. We were teenagers in a small town with nothing better to do, so we took a side road and climbed up a forested hill to the freeway. We arrived on the roadway directly at the scene where a motorhome had crossed the center divide and crashed head-on into a Honda. The Honda was cut in half and pieces were scattered everywhere, as were bodies that had partially been covered up by the time we arrived.
I've since seen plenty of horrific car wrecks and other crime scenes. I've seen gruesome photographs and heard graphic testimony that virtually no newspaper would publish. But the fact of the matter is that these things do happen. They're real, and sometimes they happen to people who never dreamed that life could be so cruel.
To come back around to Fagan's column, that's why he witnesses executions. It's part of his job to remind people that horrible things happen and that we need to be aware of them rather than just pretend they don't exist. As Fagan says, "Many of these things were more traumatic to me than watching five murderers sleep their way to eternity while attached to intravenous poison lines."
It all comes back to the one word I've clung to over the years and have used in more than a few deep, introspective writings: perspective. Another reporter asked if I was planning to attend February's execution and said he was, but he thought witnessing it could "cause some major psychological damage." I, on the other hand, see it more from Fagan's view.
Posted by Layla at 10:20 PM, December 19, 2005
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