(A column I wrote for The Cincinnati Post ... published Feb. 23, 2002)
LUCASVILLE, Ohio -- My reaction arose from neither familiarity nor sense of personal loss.
This hulking, hardened man with the Fu Manchu and massive arms blackened with crude prison tattoos meant nothing to me. We never had met since he refused my requests for an interview on Death Row.
Still, his entrance was a literal shock. The man who walked into the eerily dim room at 10 a.m. Tuesday was a stranger, albeit one about whom I had written nearly 70 stories.
The first time I laid eyes on John Byrd Jr., he had nine minutes to live.
Without urging or assistance, he slid onto the table and lay his arms onto the extensions as the execution team went about its grim work of strapping him down.
Once the IV lines were inserted into the pre-fitted vein shunts, the man behind the glass raised his head to survey the six media voyeurs who stood 12 feet away to verify the execution of sentence in Ohio vs. Byrd.
For a chilling flash of a second, Byrd made eye contact. I tried to calm myself. I was a detached observer with no personal stake in whether Byrd was executed at the age of 38 or died of old age.
I had sat with his mother and sister as they welled into tears over their loss-in-waiting. Their grief was discomforting, but ultimately, their son and brother was of little consequence in my life.
I also had covert empathy for the women of another family whose eyes burned with the resolve of an 18-year wait for justice. Monte Tewksbury was a loving husband, a good father, a decent soul, but I never knew him.
I consider myself an old-school, seen-it-all journalist who can wall off the emotions that accompany the gut-wrenching. But this assignment was unlike any accident, fire, murder or plane crash I ever had covered.
In the ultimate exercise of its authority, the state was sending a man to an unnatural death - killing a man some believed innocent - with an overdose of chemicals retailing for $43.23. The act was to be like euthanizing a pet.
To my surprise, my heart was pounding from adrenaline. My hand was shaking from jangled nerves, deteriorating my note-taking a notch below its usual level of nearly indecipherable. The throbbing in my temples was distracting.
I had a job to do, but was betrayed by something over which I had no control - my humanity. I wanted to flee this horror. But the reporter remained rooted, pen scribbling.
For the enormity of what occurred during those nine minutes, my notebook is surprisingly empty: 171 words across four pages. But the few words are but bookmarks to greater detail never to be forgotten.
''10:04 a.m. Statement over. Raising head, mouthing words to lawyers standing at window.
''10:05. Deep breath. Eyes half lidded. Faint smile to lawyers. Mouth words. 'I'm free.' Head rested down on bed.
''10:06. Slow blinks, breathing slowing, lapsed into unconsciousness.
''10:07. Breathing stopped. Pallor of skin change. Left fist clenched.'' Two words I cannot read. The next is clear enough: ''Dead?''
''Curtains at 10:08. Lawyers hug. Crying.'' More handwriting I cannot read. ''Somber, sad-eyed Mathew (Tewksbury, a witness and Monte's son). Curtains open. Warden: 10:09 a.m. Curtains close.''
I walk from the death house grim at the taking of life, knowing while I can write a story, I cannot truly describe its surreal quality.
Analyzing my gut reaction to watching a man be killed, I chide the bravado of believing my hard-nosed reporter facade was impenetrable.
The execution of John Byrd Jr. was an unnerving tragedy, self-provoked and perhaps deserved, but sad nonetheless. To have no reaction would have been impossible.
Extracting eye-for-an-eye justice on behalf of the people is a nasty, hellacious business - and may it always remain so.
If Gov. Bob Taft would witness an execution, his power of clemency truly would be tempered with mercy and insistence on certainity.
And if every Ohioan could watch the unnatural ebbing of life, the death penalty might not long survive.
Randy Ludlow is The Post's Statehouse bureau chief.
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