Getting it right

I'm reading a book called "Within These Walls." It's written by a Texas Correctional Facility Chaplain named Carroll Pickett. Rev. Picket attended 95 executions while he was chaplain. I called him, not so much as a reporter, but as someone who needed some help and guidance before attending this execution.

I asked the same questions the men on death row asked. "What can I expect? What will it be like?" And he told me. It was not a formal interview and strictly for my own peace of mind so I won't repeat it here. But it comforted me. But then again, that's what ministers do and I thank him for it.

Pickett's book arrived today. I've already read half of it. I had to smile. The media are so accurately portrayed in one sense - moving among protestors for comments, wanting interviews from victims, families and the condemned. That's our job. It's what we do. Those who would use the execution of a man/woman to make headlines are out there obviously. Some media will embellish, lie, leave out things and to make things up to sell newspapers - as Pickett writes, I suppose. But those papers wouldn't exist if people didn't keep buying and reading them. It is what people believe of the media that's perception, and based on a few bad journalists. Just as so many people believe all people on death row are evil and deserve to be there, or that all police are corrupt and mean and able to be "bought."

How much of our lives are governed by perception rather than a searching out of the facts? How often do we get both sides of a story before making a judgment?

How cruel we are to each other. We don't understand, or appear to understand. We are too willing to let one bad experience forever color our opinions. He's right though. Reporters can be callous - as can police officers, as can anyone who deals so frequently with the horrors, or the relentless tragedy of life as those in our professions do. But Rev. Pickett did say one thing that I can't get out of my head. "Get it right," he said. "Get the last words right. The media hears what it wants to hear. They hear what they expect to hear. Get it right."

He was talking about Emmett's last words. Listen, he encouraged. Listen carefully to what he says, not what you expect. I don't know what I would expect him to say. How do you imagine that? If he turns his head I may look him in the eyes, but then again, what will I see? What will I see when I look into the eyes of John Langley's family? What resides in the eyes of daughters and sons and family who don't have John Langley and who haven't for six years? I want to get Emmett's words right, but I want to get their words right as well.

In Rev. Pickett's book he writes that the only way to do his job, regardless of how he felt personally about the death penalty, was to remain neutral. I am struggling to remain neutral, even as I read the accounts of Langley's brutal death. Langley had no last words. No one was there to comfort him as he died. No one was there to look into his eyes. No one was there to hear what he might have wanted to say before he slipped into eternity.

How do you "get it right"? How do you reach a balance, or do you? How do I find that fulcrum where the crime, the bludgeoning of a man with a brass lamp, tips the scales with acknowledging the fear of a man, even a murderer, strapped to a gurney in front of a room full of strangers who will watch him, in the most vulnerable moment of his life?

How do you get it right? You don't. There will be people who hate me for having compassion for Emmett, people who will hate me for not having enough compassion for Emmett. There will be letters from those who are angry I didn't advocate against the death penalty. There will be those who are angry I don't want the Death House humming 24/7 with executions. I don't, as the saying goes, have a dog in this fight. I'm just trying to be a reporter and to some degree, a compassionate human being. I don't think anyone is right. I'm just here to report on what I witness, what people say, what people feel, how I am moved - or not, by what I will witness.

Christopher Scott Emmett will be moved this weekend. He'll leave his current facility and be placed in a cell in the Greensville Correctional Facility where he'll begin to count down the hours and days he has to live. He will do whatever it is prisoners do. He will sleep, think, maybe pray, maybe not. He may read, cry, swear or sing. He may stare at his own reflection - if there is a polished surface to stare into. He may be calm, he may not. He may relive the night he killed Langley - although some accounts say he doesn't remember killing him. He may replay the confession in his head - just as prosecutors replayed the taped confession he gave the night of the murder.

Whatever he does, whatever he says. Whatever Langley's family does or says. Whatever happens, I just want to get it right.