AT THE EXECUTION

BY LAUREN JANIS

Aman in a Jesus t-shirt walks slowly down the side of the highway dragging a six-foot wooden cross on his back. A cameraman approaches. Then photographers and reporters surround him, pointing microphones in his face and peppering him with questions. It is eighty-six degrees on South State Road 63 in Terre Haute, Indiana. The road passes by the prison where Timothy McVeigh awaits execution for bombing the federal building in Oklahoma City and killing 168 people. It is Sunday, June 10 at about 12:30 p.m., the day before the scheduled lethal injection, and this lone, crossbearing protester is the biggest piece of news that has happened all day.

I have just arrived in Terre Haute, pulling my rental car onto Thomas Norris's front lawn. He has lived across the street from the penitentiary for thirty-two years and, overnight, has become a parking entrepreneur. On his lawn, there are three satellite trucks, about fifty cars, and a van selling food and drinks. He charges $1,000 for satellite trucks and $10 for cars. "I raise a garden, but I can't give my vegetables away," Norris says. "This is the most I ever made on my property." I drive onto the flattened grass and hand my $10 to Norris, who sits under a tree talking to reporters. He is one of the big interviews of the day. So is Harold Smith, from Albany, New York, another death-penalty protester, who has been standing down the road for three days holding a handmade sign that says, "Our Jesus loves Tim even if we don't." Smith tells me that so far he has given about seventy-five interviews.

There are 1,400 journalists in Terre Haute to cover the execution. Only there isn't much to cover. "We're interviewing crazy people because there's nothing else to do," says Thomas Nilssen, a photographer for Expressen, a national daily in Sweden.

"Columbine, the Florida recount, the Unabomber, they all got media circuses," says Kevin Fagan of the San Francisco Chronicle. "But this is insane."

Media City rises up on the front lawn of the prison. Small white broadcasting tents stand about 400 yards from the brown-brick prison, carving out the perfect penitentiary backdrop for their anchors, complete with curled barbed wire glinting in the sun. Behind them are air-conditioned trailers and a long row of satellite trucks. NBC and ABC have large private tents, in which buffet meals are served. Off to the side is a large filing tent where, for about $1,200, you can get a table and chair, modem hookup, phone, and one bottle of chilled water. Inside the tent, there are colorful tablecloths and flower centerpieces. Out in the sun, journalists in sunglasses walk through the grass or lounge on beach chairs in the shade of the trees. Some have brought baseball mitts and play catch. Others drive from tent to tent in rented golf carts. It feels like a wedding, except that we are there to cover an execution. "Camp McVeigh," grumbles one photographer. "McVeighapalooza," says a reporter.

At around 3 p.m. on Sunday, McVeigh's lawyers, Robert Nigh and Nathan Chambers, arrive in a golf cart. The media pack circles around them, cameras, microphones, and equipment hovering like large, mechanical insects. A few questions are asked; a few answers are given. And then Nigh and Chambers tuck themselves into the back of the golf cart and are whisked away, journalists sprinting behind them to yell one more question and snap one more photo. "When you see full-grown men running after golf carts with lawyers in them, that about sums it up," says Michael Clevenger, a photographer with the Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky.

At 11 p.m., an official press briefing is held. Inmate McVeigh is sleeping some and watching television, we are told. His last meal was two pints of mint chocolate-chip ice cream. The briefing lasts about five minutes. Reporters call in the news. The words "Mint chocolate-chip ice cream" are heard all over the prison's front lawn, spoken into cell phones, relayed to newsrooms across the country. "That's right. Two pints."

It is 4 a.m. outside the prison training center. We stand in the dark, waiting to choose the ten media witnesses who will be permitted inside the death chamber. Of the 1,400 journalists in Terre Haute, 1,390 of us will see nothing. The Bureau of Prisons has defined the witnesses as: one Terre Haute newspaper; one Oklahoma City newspaper; two print journalists; three television news representatives (two national, and one from Oklahoma City); one radio station; and two wire services.

We are divided up by category (print, television, wire, radio) to choose who will watch McVeigh die. The Bureau of Prisons memo says that the method of selection is up to the journalists (will we duke it out? conduct a talent show? thumb wrestle?), and that the selection process should take no more than forty-five minutes. Some of the big guns -- The Washington Post, The New York Times, the L.A. Times -- had argued for veto power, for the right to reject a journalist from a small paper who might not have the experience or expertise to be a witness and pool reporter. We ultimately decide that a lottery is the most egalitarian and least insulting method.

Little yellow tickets are handed out to the thirty-three print journalists in the room where I am sitting, hoping not to get chosen. We all sit gripping our tickets like third-graders waiting to see who will be first to strike the piñata. The Bureau of Prisons official pulls out the first ticket from a white, plastic bucket and reads off a number. Crocker Stephenson of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Then Kevin Johnson of USA Today. Phew.

"I was extremely nervous," says John Masson of The Indianapolis Star.

"I felt some relief," says Butch John of the Louisville Courier-Journal.

Crocker Stephenson, however, feels wired. This might be because he spent the night drinking coffee at Denny's, but he seems excited to have been chosen. "It was like an adrenaline rush," he says. The big guns rush over to him, dispensing advice. Notice the color McVeigh turns. Watch his breath. See when he stops moving. "They were just making sure that I pay attention," says Stephenson, "which I plan to do."

I walk back to Media City in the dark. It is 5 a.m., and I stop by David's Food Center to forage for breakfast. Raoul David, owner of the market across the street from the prison, has also become a local celebrity because of his proximity to ground zero. He tells me that the reporter from The New Yorker was very nice. I ask if David has any coffee. "No," he says, "but follow me." He walks me to his house, next door, where his mother makes me a cup of instant. I ask her what she is doing up so early. She smiles and says, "No English." So I sit with Mrs. David, quietly sipping coffee, watching FBI agents stomp around in the grass through the picture window behind her.

Back at Media City, the clouds bloom pink over the prison. The sun rises as we convene for a press briefing at 6 a.m. After that, there isn't much to do until the main event scheduled for seven. Journalists, many of whom haven't slept all night, wander the grounds looking a little the worse for wear, especially the print journalists and photographers. "The print guys stumble out of cheap hotel rooms while the broadcast guys are here getting omelets cooked for them and getting their hair coiffed in double-wide trailers," says Fagan of the San Francisco Chronicle.

At around 6:20 a.m., I realize that I am killing time. Killing time until Killing Time, I think to myself. Beyond the barbed wire and the brick walls, someone in there has forty minutes to live.

Reporters begin to gather around the press briefing tent, chatting quietly, sipping coffee, munching donuts, making calls. I look at my watch. It is 7 a.m. Reporters continue chatting, sipping, munching, and cell-phoning. The moment comes and goes. It's 7:01, I think to myself; someone in there is dying. Thomas Norris, the parking king, had predicted it. "You look at your watch, you say, 'Okay, it's seven a.m.' You ain't gonna hear it, smell it, nothing." He was right.

The ten media witnesses return from the death chamber and take the stage. "Timothy McVeigh died with his eyes open," begins Byron Pitts of CBS News. Each journalist adds his or her version of the events, and what unfolds feels like Rashomon. McVeigh looked at us with a sense of pride, says one. He did not have a look of arrogance, says another. He looked more fearful, says Pitts. He didn't blink. He blinked a few times. He stared at the ceiling. He turned yellow. He died at 7:14 a.m.

*

The event that 1,400 of us have come to cover is over. Most of us have seen nothing. Ten of us watched, with perhaps a mingling sense of responsibility and revilement, duty and disgust.

"It made me feel like it was perverse," Stephenson tells me, his fiery adrenaline now gone. It was so mechanical, ritualized, and aseptic that it felt like a Disney ride, he says. "As he began to yellow, I felt repulsed by being there." Stephenson is quick to add that he'd do it again. Professionally speaking, he feels it is important to observe. On a human level, he isn't so sure. Moments later, he is back in the throng, creeping up behind Bud Welch, the father of a woman killed in Oklahoma City, shoving his tape recorder over Welch's right shoulder. "It's quite a relief to get back into the professional mode," Stephenson says.

Next come the victims. Paul Howell, who lost a daughter, and Anthony Scott and Sue Ashford, who survived the bombing, take the stage. "I'm feeling pretty good," says Howell. "We were happy," says Scott. "I'm elated," says Ashford. I had hoped that their words would provide the human element to connect all the hoopla of the past twenty-four hours to the real loss and real tragedy and the real reason why we are here. But they don't. Six years ago, 168 people lost their lives, and two hours ago their murderer was killed. But I don't feel the emotion, the impact, the weight. I'm not sure what was accomplished. Do the victims feel better? a reporter calls out. "About that much," says Scott, indicating an inch with his thumb and forefinger. Howell says that as he watched, he thought of his daughter and the others he knew who had died in the blast. "I said a prayer," he says, "and told them it's over with."

And so it was. I leave Media City and head back to my car. Harold the protester is gone. Norris is gone from his stoop, and so is his food truck. As I walk along South State Road 63, I hear sirens. "Did you see that?" asks a reporter walking in front of me. "That was McVeigh." (I would later find out that it wasn't. It was a decoy hearse used for security reasons.) The reporter recites, "9:36 a.m. Black hearse passes by with police escort," as he writes the words in his narrow notebook.

The empty hearse heads south on 63. I get in my car and head north.

 

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Lauren Janis is CJR's assistant editor.