What can you say about watching a man die?
It was a long trip over to the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. The weather was cold and windy, but it was still evident that Lady Oklahoma was putting on her glad rags, Bradford pear and redbuds popping out color all along the highways.
We stayed overnight in town so that I could go to the prison early the next morning. It was still dark when I arrived, concerned that at the last minute I might not really be on the list. But I was ushered into the facility after ID checks and sent on to the media staging area.
That’s where the imposter syndrome started into overdrive. The others in the room were some big dogs, veteran journalists like Nolan Clay from the Oklahoman and Sean Murphy from the Associated Press. The rest of the full house was less intimidating since I have been doing this longer than most of them have been alive.
We were briefed and Clay, the most veteran of the veterans, told us first timers what to expect and what not to do. Mostly, don’t talk in the witness room. At all. Not a word.
Wendell Grissom’s family was there, his sister and other relatives, his spiritual advisers. So was the Oklahoma Attorney General and the Blaine County District Attorney, Tommy Humphries. In a separate room where we couldn’t see them sat the family of his victim, Amber Matthews.
The entire execution went like clockwork, the reading of the order of execution, the inmate’s last words, the administration of the first chemical, then a check by a doctor to ensure the inmate was unconscious. He was. In fact, he snored a little. Then the second drug and the third. His left hand flexed, his arm moved slightly. His respiration, already pronounced, slowed, then stopped as his face grew paler, then ashen. The inmate was pronounced dead at 10:13 a.m.
His sister wept quietly as the AG said he was sorry for her loss. We were ushered out in reverse order of entrance.
It was all very somber, quiet, detached.
Back at the media center we heard the account of the events by the executive director of the Department of Corrections and the media giants, the old hands. They’ve done this before and know the drill. I hope I never gain that kind of experience.
We heard from the victim’s family, the survivors. It all seemed dispassionate, even through the tears. I don’t mean the reactions were faked, but everyone seemed just worn out from it, from 20 years of waiting and living with this.
The only takeaway was an overriding sense of sadness, of the senseless death of a beautiful young woman.
But outside the barbed wire and gray concrete, the day was warming up and more flowers turned their faces toward the sunshine, reaching for spring.