The state of Texas leads the nation in executions by a wide margin. Last year Texas set a record; executing forty men, and breaking the old record of 38, also set by Texas, in 1997.

Since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, Texas has executed 249 men and women. By contrast, in those years, California has executed nine.

Since 1924, all of the executions in Texas have been carried out in the small city of Huntsville, population 35,000, at the "Walls" Unit named for its 32-foot high walls.

The city has one newspaper, the Huntsville Item, with a circulation of around 7,000. Michelle Lyons is a 25-year-old reporter for the Item. The paper covers every execution whether high profile, or obscure.

Since Lyons took over the prison beat less than two years ago; she has witnessed the deaths of nearly fifty people. Amidst covering local bake sales, Easter egg hunts, and city council meetings, a couple of times a month, sometimes more, Lyons makes her way to the Walls Unit to witness a convicted murderer being put to death.

the book: Why does your paper cover every execution? ML: Because the death chamber is in Huntsville, many years ago, our then editor worked out a deal where the Huntsville Item would have a spot at every execution. The Associated Press is always represented, and the other three slots go to media from the city where the crime took place. Last night we had a full house with three reporters from Tyler, Texas, where the crime took place. Sometimes not all the media slots are filled, if it's a case that didn't gather a lot of media interest.

the book: How many executions have you witnessed? ML: I'm not sure. I can figure it out. There were ten this year, and I saw nine of them . . . last year there were 40, and I saw 38. And I saw one in 1998, so that's 48. Last year there were approximately five and six a month. This year there have been a lot less. The most recent was last night. His name was James Wilkens Junior. He was jealous of his ex-girlfriend dating his former roommate. He ambushed them and her four-year-old son as they arrived home. He killed the roommate and son, and shot the woman a number of times. She played dead, and he left. She told police, and he was executed for it.

the book: do you remember the first execution? ML: Yes, it was in 1998. I don't remember the month. I think it was summertime. I don't remember his name. I want to say it was a Hispanic man, and I remember he killed two men with a hammer in San Antonio.

the book: Were you afraid or nervous before witnessing your first execution? ML: No. I was told what to expect, and that it would be, as an act, fairly anti-climactic. It is not a gruesome scene, so I was not nervous.

the book: Do you feel anything emotionally, or have you become numb to any emotional response. ML: I don't think "numb" is a good way to describe it. It's no different than covering an accident, or a fire. It's my job, and my job isn't to have emotions about it either way.

the book: You're a young person and yet you have probably witnessed more death than many soldiers in wartime. ML: The difference is, they're seeing much more gruesome things. I'm watching someone appear to go to sleep. It must be tremendously hard for a soldier, or an EMS worker, the things they see are much more terrible than what I see.

the book: Do you feel that witnessing has changed your opinions on the death penalty one way or the other. ML: No. My opinion about it is the same as it has always been. The only difference is, I think I understand both sides of the argument better, because I've worked with both sides.

the book: are you comfortable stating your position? ML: No. I never do. Even though I think people make guesses. I have to work with both sides. I interview these inmates before they die, and how would it be for them to read an article that said I support the death penalty? And on the flipside, I work with the victims' families, and if I come out saying, let's spare these inmates' lives, they're not going to want to work with me either. My articles are supposed to be balanced, to tell both sides.

the book: Take us through the day of an execution. ML: On the day of the execution, I will generally be atwork as usual. I will have spoken to the inmate, or the District Attorney, or the inmate's attorneys, and I'll compile all of that information as best I can before I go. At 5 o'clock, I go to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Administration building, across the street from the "Walls", where the death chamber is located. Once there, I will go to the public information office where the media witnesses assemble. At 6 o'clock, if there are no problems, we get a phone call that it's time to go across the street to the death chamber. We will be accompanied by the public information officers.

They do a quick pat search to make sure we don't have any cellphones, pagers, or recording devices. Pretty much all you can have are a notepad and pen. At that point they separate the media group into two. Two or three of us go with the inmate's family, and the rest with the victim's family. The two families never meet. The victim's family is accompanied in followed by the media who will be witnessing with them, then the inmate's family with their media witnesses. We do not get to choose who we sit with; we are assigned. They usually do not put me with Mike Graczyk of the Associated Press, so afterwards he and I confer, and get what was going on on the other side.

When we come in, the inmate is already stretched out on the execution gurney, his arms at either side; it actually resembles a cross. The needles are already in place, so we don't watch as they're preparing the veins, or putting the needles in, and they're covered up with Ace bandage type restraints. The inmate is restrained to the table. There's a microphone that extends down from the ceiling resting just above the inmate's mouth, so we will hear him clearly through the speakers in each of the witnessing rooms.

The Chaplain has met with the inmate a few days before the execution, and has spent the afternoon with him, unless the inmate requests otherwise. Now he stands at the foot of the gurney, with his hand on the inmate's leg. If the inmate has his own spiritual advisor, that person may witness from the witnessing room, but may not be in the execution chamber. Once everybody is in place, an administrator comes in through a small door inside the death chamber, and says, "warden you may proceed".

At that point the warden will ask the inmate if he has any last words. They can say pretty much anything they want, I've seen some apologize and cry, I've seen some that were ugly with the victim's family. I've seen some make jokes. My favorite joke was a man last year who said, "if I'm paying my debt to society, then I'm due a rebate and a refund" I laughed, and then II stopped, because it's still an execution. And some don't say anything at all. After they're finished, the warden will give a secret signal, and the lethal injection process begins.

We can't tell the precise moment, but we'll know when he starts to have a reaction. The first chemical is a massive sedative, so they seem as though they're going into a sleep. Several inmates have talked about a taste accompanying the chemicals. One said it tasted "funny", while another compared it to rubber. The second chemical is a muscle relaxant that collapses the diaphragm, and that's when you hear the gasp that everyone always talks about.

Some of them cough, or last night I noted, it sounded like he was snoring. But they'll make some sort of a sound as all the air is being expelled. The third chemical stops the heart. Obviously we don't see any reaction with that. Then we wait. Usually for seven to eight minutes, and then the physician comes in and pronounces the inmate dead. They announce the time into the microphone, and then we're ushered out. Afterwards, the victim's family may have a press conference.

the book: Is this a satisfying moment for the families? ML: For many of them, I think it is. Only once have I heard a family member say, had he not been executed, "I would have been fine with it." She didn't have a strong preference one way or the other. And there is also a difference, between the families who have a received an apology and the families who did not. I have a friend that works with one of the victims' advocacy groups and she's told me that there really is such a difference when the family receives an apology.

the book: Is that true even if the prisoner isn't executed? ML: The people I've worked with, doing my coverage, I don't think they would have been satisfied with anything less than seeing this person executed. And I don't think it means more to them because this person is apologizing on their deathbed, but had this person not been executed, I don't think that many of them would ever have been able to rest.

the book: Are there some executions that stand out in your memory? ML: The double execution was last year. It doesn't happen very often, it just happens that two different courts will sentence two different inmates to die on the same night. So conceivably you could have a night where you have three or four. But it went very quickly that night. They had the first execution, they ushered us out, and minutes later we were going in for the second one. They always change the garments on the gurney, like there's a little pillow and all that. They don't use the same ones for every inmate.

There was such a contrast between the two. The first one was a large black man. The second, this very small Hispanic man, so even the way they looked was completely different, but also the way they carried themselves. The first inmate was very angry. He was ugly with the victim's family. He taunted, them, saying "y'all kiss my black ass" and told them, "be careful when y'all are driving home - don't have no wreck and kill yourself because I'll see you on the way." The second inmate just cried, and kept saying how sorry he was. He raped and killed a woman while she was jogging, and he apologized profusely. He also said he was sorry to his own family, "sorry for putting you through this."

The execution of Panchai Wilkerson was the most memorable. We were watching the execution, when he started muttering. All we could pick up was "as of Wilkerson", and you could see his tongue moving around, and something shiny, like a retainer. All of a sudden he gives his last gasp, and at his lips appears a small handcuff key, sitting there on his bottom lip.

The warden rushed forward and grabbed it, so at first I wasn't sure of what I had seen. I turned to some other people in the room, and wrote on my notepad in big letters: "Key?" They're all nodding, so I knew I was right. It was creepy. It turns out that before the execution, he kept telling the officers back in the holding cell, "I have a secret. I have a secret."

And they would say, "what's the secret" but he wouldn't tell. And what he had said, the chaplain in the execution chamber later told us, was "the secret as of Wilkerson" and then he spat out the key. Then there was the man who had no one to come see him die. I don't recall his name. I remember his face. He had no one there to watch on his behalf --and many of the inmates don't, they'll tell their families, "I don't want you to watch me die." And that may have been the case with him, but he had no one there, and he never spoke, and never looked to the side. He just lay there silently, staring at the ceiling, and he cried. And it seemed very lonely.

the book: Why is a cheeseburger the most popular last meal? ML: I don't know, but there is one inmate at the Huntsville "Walls" unit, not a death row inmate, he's serving time, who exclusively prepares all of the last meals, and I'm told he makes a really mean cheeseburger. The other problem is, it has to be food that they already have on the unit. So when you hear people saying, oh, he could have lobsterÑthat's not true, they don't have lobster on the unit. So they request cheeseburgers a lot, and I've seen a lot of sarcastic requests.

There was a guy who requested dirt. They gave him yogurt. I don't know if that's because it sounds kind of the same. There was an inmate last year who requested "justice, equality and world peace." Last night, Wilkens requested all breakfast type foods. That's pretty common. Many of them request sunny side up eggs, bacon, that sort of thing. Even if they don't request a meal, they always have a platter back there, cookies and little snack type foods, in case they change their minds.

the book: Should executions be televised? Should the public have the opportunity to see what you've seen? ML: I really don't have an opinion on that. I don't think it will ever happen. I'm not opposed to it, in that I think it would satisfy people's curiosity. Many people seem to think it is a gruesome affair, and I think they would see it's not. But I'm not for it either. I don't see a good reason for televising that. It's like how I feel when I drive past an accident and see everybody rubbernecking at this gruesome scene.

The way I look at it is, that's what I'm paid to do. I'm paid to go and cover this wreck so you don't have to look at it. And I'm paid to cover these executions so people don't have to see them, just know it's carried out. On August 15th, 2001, 25 year old inmate Napoleon Beazley was sentenced to die for the murder of the father of a prominent federal appeals court judge, a murder he committed when he was 17. On August 15h, after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to issue a stay, with less than four hours to go before the scheduled execution, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals issued an indefinite stay.

Lyons covered Beazley's case, as well as that of the unknown Jeffery Doughtie, who was to be executed the day after Beazley. According to Lyons, Beazley, compared having a death sentence to having a terminal illness. "I imagine it's like cancer," he said. "It eats away at you piece by piece, and then you get to a point where you don't care if you live or die.

Jeffery Doughtie, condemned to death for the 1993 beating death of an elderly Corpus Christi couple, told her, "What bothers me is seeing the young ones sentenced to die. They haven't even learned how to live and they're having to learn how to die. If anybody should be executed, it should be me because I had a million chances and I blew every one."

Napoleon Beazley, 25, had declined his last meal, and was in the midst of writing what would have been his last statement, when he was notified at 2:45 p.m. of the indefinite stay of execution.

He was set to be executed after 6 p.m. for the April 19, 1994, murder of 63-year-old John E. Luttig of Tyler. When Chaplain Jim Brazzil told him of the stay, "The inmate at first showed no emotion. He sat on the bunk and stopped writing."

When asked if he was "OK," Beazley said, "Yes, I'm fine - I just have to comprehend this. Give me a second." A few minutes later, the inmate reportedly broke into a smile. Jeffery Doughtie was executed August 16, 2001 taking Beazley's place as the twelfth man executed in Texas this year.

Huntsville Item
www.itemonline.com°

Witness to an execution
www.soundportraits.org/on-air/witness_to_an_execution°

TDJC deathrow homepage
www.tdcj.state.tx.us/stat/deathrow.htm°

Bureau of Justice Statistics on capital punishment
www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/cp.htm°