There's a reason...

There was a reason Rev. Pickett never read a prisoner's "jacket" (folder of a prisoner's criminal history). It goes back to the original statement I made when I started this blog. It personalizes someone to know the details of their life. It makes it harder to put aside emotion and to watch someone put to death when you know the little details of their life. Pickett had the brief luxury of ignorance - of not knowing anything about these men until they walked through the door of the death room and he spent the next 18 hours with them.

That made it hard enough - getting to know them, knowing they would die before that first handshake was 24 hours old. I've spent the last two weeks reading about the case, reading about the death penalty, the actual act of execution. I've even spent hours interviewing and listening and replaying the interviews with family members as they talk about how their father's or their brother's death impacted them. It's hard. I'll go into that witness room well prepared and totally unprepared.