ManicDDaily

An article that caught my eye from the October 20, 2009, The New York Times was titled “One Reporter’s Lonely Beat, Witnessing Executions,”  (by Richard Pérez-Peña.)

Because I was reading the Times online, I picked the title out of the list of most currently emailed articles  and clicked on it.  This meant that I had no idea what newspaper section it had been printed in, no sense of the other stories around it, no context.

As a result, I clicked with the calm certainty that the article would be about Iran, or Afghanistan, or China, some distant locale of renowned penal severity.  In fact, it was about Texas.

The article, moreover, did not truly focus on the high number of annual executions in Texas, but on the press coverage (or lack thereof) of so many of such executions.

Apparently, there is now only one reporter regularly covering the “execution” beat, an Associated Press reporter, Michael Graczyk, based in Houston.  Mr. Graczyk has witnessed more than 300 executions, although he has, in fact, lost count.

Mr. Graczyk has increasingly become the only member of the press at these Texas executions, the only only non-interested witness (neither a family member of the victim, or inmate.)   This is attributed to (i) the shrinking size of newsrooms and budgets, and (ii) the fact that executions in Texas have become so routine.

In the interest of neutrality, Mr. Graczyk does not reveal his personal views on capital punishment, though he says he often stands in the viewing room of family members of the victim.  (There are apparently two viewing rooms, one for family members of the inmate, and one for family members of the victim.)  However, he says he makes this choice partly because it’s easier to get out of victim’s room faster and file his story faster.

I am against capital punishment.  I know that the crimes involved are beyond heinous.  I have to admit that I probably would be too wimpy to even hear about  many of them;  Mr. Pérez-Peña says that the details of many are “so gruesome it is hard to imagine that they are real.”   I also believe that it is possible that some relief is felt by a victim’s family upon the extermination of a person who has caused so much horror and suffering.  Even so, I am against state participation in further violence.  I certainly wouldn’t release a killer (and I understand that that is what many fear), but I don’t believe in adding more killing into the equation.  It concerns me that violence begets violence;  it worries me that pre-meditated, state-justified, violence makes for an even more violent culture; a place where violence is a readily-thinkable option.

Even if one is not against capital punishment, however, it is chilling to think that there are parts of our country, including the localities in which many of the executions are actually held, in which they are increasingly not considered newsworthy.

As the article says, “the only sound regularly heard during the execution itself, is, of all things, snoring.”

This entry was posted on October 22, 2009 at 12:41 am and is filed under news. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: capital punishment, executions, manicddaily, Michael Graczyk, Richard Pérez-Peña, Texas, Texas executions