What I learned

What I've learned from this execution process so far is this:

Death is not the issue. Emotions are. I truly and honestly believe that the process of watching Christopher Scott Emmett will not unsettle me. I have seen too much death - from hospice to hospitals to nursing homes to the Rescue Squads I've worked on. What is upsetting to me is witnessing the emotional toll the process takes.

Every war veteran I've ever spoken to has said the same thing, "You don't make friends. They go out and never come back." It's easier to watch a stranger die than a friend die. We know that. It's why rubber-neckers can roll past a horrific automobile accident on the interstate and then be talking about it over dinner with friends like it was a movie they saw. There's no personal connection.

Racism. Make the connection with people of a different race or culture and it becomes harder to hate. When we, as people, connect with others, our entire way of perceiving, relating, judging and even healing, changes.

Defense attorneys know this. They go out of their way to paint the most despicable client as someone who "suffered a bad childhood." They're trying to connect with the jury to elicit a sympathetic response and a lighter sentence. It's calculated, but it works. Should jurors consider the emotional response they feel - if any? The prosecutor painted Emmett for what he was at the time, a crack-head all hopped up on drugs who bludgeoned his sleeping friend to death over $100 for more crack. Nope - not the sort of character you feel all warm and fuzzy about. Even if you'd invited him over for dinner once, you wouldn't do it again after hearing that.

The Defense attorney says Emmett, because of a bad childhood, did drugs. He wants the jury to feel compassion, to cut Emmett some slack, to consider life in prison rather than the death penalty. He wants jurors to think, "What if it had been my son or daughter on drugs and they had killed someone?" Should jurors listen? Do they serve justice best by listening to the facts, or listening to a skillful attorney? Tough call. The judge knows all this is going on - yet, judges too take into account the personal things that help them decide whether a criminal is evil incarnate and fire the death house up NOW, or - life in prison would serve society better (Whatever that means).

If we have to emotionally disconnect to do our jobs, how effectively are we doing our jobs? When we see the world as black and white, or good and bad - how does it affect how we do our jobs? How much disconnect should there be? Where does the "public's right to know" end and the right of the family for emotional and personal privacy begin? Tough call. Journalists make it every day.

I took this assignment because I knew it would challenge me. I just didn't know how much and in what ways. It's more than choosing to watch the state kill a man for a violent crime. It's dipping into the waters of hate, love, revenge, anguish, grief and sorrow and trying to make enough sense of it all - to condense it into a form that readers can take in.

Have I made my readers think more about this issue? I hope so. I've made myself think about it a lot more - and will - in the next months as we wait to see what the U.S. Supreme Court decides.