Volunteering to watch an execution

[Benton]

One of my papers covers my state's only maximum security prison, and the only one to perform executions. Three have been conducted (I think) since 76, with two abstaining the appeals process and requesting their executions. I was at the last one, Marco Chapman, in 2008.

Doing a story on it and over the vigil against the execution changed a lot of my beliefs. I wasn't strongly for or against before, but I'm firmly against executions now.

It's weird at a prison for everyone involved. There's (at least in the one I was involved with) a lot of respect for the process and what's about to happen. i've been to KSP a dozen times and it's never much different. But that day it was like a library. Nobody spoke, no one made eye contact, everybody just went through routines.