Execution impressions

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

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.