Don’t Bar the Public Eye at Executions

Since the earliest days of journalism--back to the time of town criers--the coverage of executions has been a brutal staple of the news business.

Believe it or not, executions have always been a plum assignment for reporters, top of the news, page one, the chance to inflict the purplest of prose on readers.

It’s easy to forget that behind all that fancy writing and careerism, the press carries out an important role as the people’s representative. And the people, on whose behalf the condemned is being executed, have the right to know that the sentence is being carried out according to law and against the right person.

These points have long been recognized. In his book, “A Just Measure of Pain,” Michael Ignatieff, a journalist and historian, wrote that in 18th century England, “the crowd knew its role as witness” to public hangings.

“It knew, for instance, that it was there to ensure that the victim was not put to excessive suffering through the malice or incompetence of the hangman. An executioner who botched the job, who allowed the victim to twist and strangle, risked being torn apart by the mob.” And public witness to the event laid to rest fears “of rich malefactors bribing hangmen to substitute some poor wretch” for the man or woman sentenced to death.

There is another important reason why reporters should witness executions. The people, after sanctioning these executions, should know what they authorized.

But now the state of California is arguing that the public, including the press, should be denied witnessing a crucial part of high-tech-style executions, the insertion of the intravenous tube into those receiving death by lethal injection.

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Personally, I favor capital punishment. But thanks to the graphic prose of newspaper writers witnessing the events, I am fully aware of the brutality of what I favor.

An example of what I mean was the execution of Barbara Graham, whose 1955 death in the San Quentin gas chamber captured the imagination of the public so much that it became the subject of a book and a movie, “I Want To Live,” starring Susan Hayward.

Graham and two men, Jack Santo and Emmett Perkins, were executed on the same day for the murder of a wealthy Burbank widow. They believed there was $100,000 in her house, stashed there by a Las Vegas gambler nephew.

Graham’s execution was delayed for an hour and a half while her lawyers desperately filed appeals. “She was like the mouse in a game of cat and mouse as her attorneys maneuvered for her life,” a United Press reporter wrote. When the warden informed her of a delay, she cried out, “Why do they torture me? I was ready to go at 10 o’clock.” Before she went into the gas chamber, a doctor was called, presumably with a sedative.

In the gas chamber, The Times’ Gene Blake reported, “She was only slightly pale and her fingers resting on the arms of the chair trembled imperceptibly. The pellets dropped at 11:34. Mrs. Graham’s breathing became labored and she tilted her head back slightly. Suddenly, it slumped forward and she appeared to lose consciousness.

“It seemed an interminable time before death came--but it was only seven minutes. She gasped and drew her head up twice. Then came another gasp. Then her head tipped far back, her mouth agape. Again and again she gasped until her head pitched forward for the last time at 11:37. Her gasps came slowly and fainter. And finally stopped.”

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The question of public access to the complete process of execution is now before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, hearing a case in which U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker ruled against the state and upheld the right of witnesses, including the media, to view the entire death-by-injection process.

When the case was argued before the Circuit Court earlier this year, the give and take didn’t appear especially favorable to the media-public side.

As reported in the Los Angeles Daily Journal, an influential, liberal justice, Harry Pregerson, said, “I have concerns about the prisoners’ privacy interests that are quite strong.”

He wondered if the condemned should have a say in whether media should attend. The state, represented by Deputy Atty. Gen. Karl Meyer, agreed, saying that an inmate’s right of privacy should supersede a media claim of access.

Such concern for prisoner privacy--ignored in just about every other aspect of inmate life--is phony. It’s just another effort to envelop the criminal justice system with secrecy.

Most of us Californians support the death penalty. But whether we support or condemn it, we should understand what we have wrought.