|
 |
Execution: 13 minutes I will never be able to forget
|
|
|
Having been selected as one of the three news reporters who would witness the execution of David Hill, I had no idea what to expect as I drove to Columbia Friday afternoon.
When it was all over, I had very mixed emotions. Because the shooting of Georgetown Police Maj. Spencer Guerry was one of the first big news stories I ever covered (I was working at a radio station doing news at the time), I feel I made the right choice.
However, it is probably something I will never seek to do again.
I, like the others who attended the execution, left Georgetown at about 1 p.m. Friday not knowing if the sentence would be carried out. At that point, the stay of execution was still intact and there had been no word from the U.S. Supreme Court on whether it would be lifted.
Less than an hour later, cell phones in several vehicles began to ring almost simultaneously as the news of the Supreme Court’s decision was being passed along.
I got the call from Mark Plowden of the S.C. Attorney General’s Office, who said the high court had decided to vacate the stay and the execution would go forward at 6 p.m.
Guerry’s widow, Sally, later told reporters she was "shocked" when she received the call because she really thought it would be postponed until a later date.
By 3 p.m., the Supreme Court’s ruling was the top story on one of the Columbia news radio stations.
Television news crews began to arrive at the prison, which was under extra-tight security by 3:30 p.m.
For the first couple of hours it seemed like any other typical event I had covered that generated a lot of media attention.
That perception changed quickly at about 5:15 p.m. when prison spokesman John Barkley led WPDE-TV 15 reporter Tonya Brown, Associated Press writer Jeffrey Collins and me to the main office of the prison and had us sit in a small room, which had been turned into a small museum, of sorts, dedicated to the state’s capital punishment chambers.
As we waited, we were surrounded by numerous historic artifacts such as old photographs from the prison, an old electric chair and a gurney.
There was also a mannequin dressed in a striped prison uniform lying on a prison bed.
At about 5:30 p.m., two prison guards took us in another room where they used a metal-detecting wand to make sure we had no weapons.
Seventeen minutes later, another man walked in the room and said, "It’s time."
With only our pens and notebooks in hand, we were then led to a white mini-van and were driven about half-a-mile deep into the complex.
Once inside, we had to sign in and were allowed into the witness room.
There were three rows of seats, the first containing three chairs, the others four.
The other witnesses were already seated when we arrived and took our place on the back row.
Because they were staring straight into the window, we were unable to see their faces.
Most of what happened next is detailed in the headline story on Page 1 of today’s Times.
One thing that I will always remember is the 13 minutes between the times David Hill closed his eyes until the he was pronounced dead. It was as if no one in the room was moving an inch or even breathing.
It was also as if time was standing still, but we knew that was not true because one of the only sounds heard was the hum of the large, old-fashioned analog clock on the back wall.
The other sound was Hill’s priest who was sitting in front of us. He was holding an open Bible, but he wasn’t looking at it. Instead his eyes were locked in on Hill and he was continuously whispering a prayer.
Once the warden announced the time of death, the reporters were quickly taken out of the room and driven back to the main office were another throng of reporters waited to hear details about what we saw.
I didn’t like that part and, fortunately for me, Brown took over and did all of the talking.
I had two hours to think about what I had witnessed as I drove back to Georgetown. It was different for me than it was for almost all of the reporters covering the story.
With the exception of Zane Wilson from the Sun News, I am the only one who lives in the town where this murder occurred. I didn’t really know David Hill, but I knew his mother.
She used to cook the chicken I would eat from Gene’s Country Store. In fact the family lived right down the road from where I grew up.
These are real people involved in this situation, not just names in news story.
Like I heard someone say, there were no winners. The Guerry family lost a loved one and so did the Hill family.
Someone also asked me if viewing the execution caused me to change my opinion of the death penalty. Since this is not the editorial page, I will not express my opinion on that controversial issue is, but I will say it did not change.
As I said, being a witness to an execution is something I will probably never volunteer to do again.
Fortunately, I cover news in a county that has a very low murder rate and there is no one from Georgetown County currently sitting on death row.
Contact Scott Harper at 546-4148, ext. 243, or by e-mail at sharper@gtowntimes.com. |
|
©Georgetown Times 2004
|
|
|
