Edward N. Bell is dead. I was there. I saw it happen.

Posted by Garren Shipley at 3:03 PM on February 23, 2009
Execution impressions


Lots of people have asked me about what I saw, and how I felt about
it, and I've spent the past few days collecting my thoughts so I
could write about it intelligently.

Walking into the execution chamber itself was somewhat of a surreal
experience. My fellow reporters and I were in quite a hurry to get
into the building. Inmates in surrounding buildings knew what was
about to happen, and they had no qualms about letting us know they
weren't happy.

All four reporters and the six state witnesses were quickly scanned
with a metal detector, and moved rapidly into the witness room,
separated from the gurney itself by a pane of glass and just a few feet.

It was here that I found one of the lighter ironies of the night:

Executions are the ultimate expression of state power, the taking of
a life under the aegis of Virginia's collective sovereignty. Yet in a
prison, anything that isn't bolted down can become a weapon during a
riot.

So we watched the execution sitting in $4 plastic lawn chairs from
Family Dollar.

An official flicked a set of cheap mini-blinds hanging over a window
on the execution room door. That was the signal to bring Ed Bell down
Virginia's version of the Green Mile, about 15 feet from his last
cell to the door of chamber.

The door opened, and the team of executioners -- all great mountains
of men -- hefted Bell through the door. I still don't know if he was
struggling against the executioners or if he had simply gone weak in
the knees, although I can say with absolute certainty that the London
Daily Mail's account was hyperbole at best.

One of Bell's lawyers said he had been given too much of a sedative
often administered to calm the nerves of the condemned. But Bell's
legs were in restraints, something the prison staff told us was not
common practice.

A nod from the man on the red telephone, and the executioners began
their work. The silence in the room was palpable. It was so quiet
that it felt disrespectful to turn the pages of my notebook to get a
clean space to write.

I don't know what everyone else watched, but I focused on two things.

One, Bell's breathing. He was visibly breathing hard when they
strapped him down, and it made it easy to track the motion of his
chest. The other was the IV lines running through the curtains.
Prison officials had warned us that that the only way to see when the
five syringes -- three of lethal drugs, two of saline -- were pushed
through the lines would be to watch when the lines shook slightly.

The lines shook slightly. Bell's chest rose and fell a little
quicker. Then it stopped. Six minutes later, Bell was dead.

We were all hustled back out to our van, where we were dropped at the
front door of the administration center. A press conference was held
to announce Bell's final words and for those of us in the room to
brief those that weren't.

I went into the room with strong feelings about the death penalty,
and I came out with strong feelings about the death penalty. Did they
change after the event? Somewhat. But not totally. Which way did they
change? That would be telling.

More than 96 hours later, I'm still turning the scene over and over
in my mind, trying to get a handle on what I saw. And I'm still
coming up with nothing, other than the same sense of unease that
compelled me to lay down two long strips of smoking rubber in Cheap
Seats One on the way out.

It was just so easy. Disturbingly easy. Frighteningly easy.

Having written about the death penalty extensively for years now, I
understand the desire and need to make executions as humane as
possible. But it strikes me that taking a human life should simply
take ... more work. It should be hard to do, and not in a legal sense.

Perhaps that just shows an institutional bias I bring to the situation.

Long before I was stalking the halls of Capitol Square, I was a cub
reporter assigned to the police beat, just like everyone else who has
ever come into this business. And just like every other cub reporter,
I cut my teeth on some pretty grizzly stuff.

Gunshots, explosions, death by fire, suicide by big rig. I've seen it
all. Witnessing violent, sudden death or its immediate aftermath
isn't that much of a shock for a long-time reporter. Not that the
loss of a life in a car crash, fire or murder isn't tragic. But it's
something that most people in a newsroom have seen before and know
how to process.

It's much the same with death by illness. Anyone who has a large
extended family knows this. The losses are no less tragic, but they
are expected and understandable. Watching a loved one with lung
cancer linger for months is wrenching, but the end is expected.

Seeing an otherwise healthy man be led into a room, lie down on a
table and die was something of a jolt.

But sitting here now, I'm surprised by my own reaction. I'm more
convinced that Virginia's execution chamber, for all but the
condemned, is a giant mirror.

There's nothing inside that room save what we take into it ourselves.

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