The executioner's song

In national first, ABC and noncommercial radio stations air tapes of Georgia electrocutions

By Dan Trigoboff -- Broadcasting & Cable, 5/7/2001

The nation for the first time got to hear the executioner's side of a working death chamber last week when excerpts from 23 electrocutions taped by the State of Georgia aired on public radio and on ABC Nightline.

Public Radio Special Report: The Execution Tapes ran on WNYC-AM-FM New York, which co-produced it, and on other public stations around the country. ABC advanced the Nightline program on World News Tonight.

Listeners heard some muffled audio from the chamber but mostly the voice of a prison official describing the executions in detached and unemotional commentary to state officials connected by phone—including an apparently botched electrocution that had to be performed twice before the prisoner died.

"This is not a decision we made lightly," said Laura Walker, president of WNYC Radio. "We were concerned that the tapes might be sensational. We wanted to make sure we would be providing context and provoke a discussion."

"That they showed the procedure to be clinical, methodical, that's what appealed to us," said Nightline producer Richard Harris. "There are people who would take comfort in how calm, clinical—almost banal—these tapes are. Critics of the death penalty would look at the tape in which it took two procedures to electrocute the prisoner. Anybody who wants to use these tapes on either side can do so."

Documentary producer David Isay found the tapes when he read that Georgia criminal defense attorney Mike Mears had subpoenaed them for his constitutional challenge to Georgia's use of the electric chair. The state has changed its method of execution to lethal injection, though only for murders committed after May 2000.

Public executions have been nonexistent since the 1930s, and taped executions are a rarity. A videotape of the 1992 execution of double-murderer Robert Alton Harris was made for the American Civil Liberties Union but never shown; KQED-TV sued the State of California in 1994 to allow it to televise the tape, but a court ordered it destroyed.

Despite its airing of the Georgia tapes, Nightline would not necessarily show the Timothy McVeigh execution even were it available. Says producer Harris: "Some of these tapes were made 17 years ago. McVeigh is a fresh wound."

Tired of it in Terre Haute

The execution of Oklahoma City bomber Tim McVeigh is a local story in Terre Haute, Ind., probably the biggest one in its history.

But "the people in this town are sick of it," says WTWO(TV) News Director Kathy Dash. "They're tired of hearing about the people who are coming, about Timothy McVeigh. They're concerned about the traffic, the protests, the effects on their community. They want to go to work, come home and see their regular local news about local government and local events. What are all the people who are being interviewed supposed to say? There's more to Terre Haute than the place Timothy McVeigh's going to die. But that's all we're hearing."

Not all the reporting that comes from Terre Haute (DMA No. 139) can be believed, Dash says. "The day the execution was announced, the media started scrounging up rooms, and the reports said there were no rooms left. But we got a call from a local Knight's Inn that said they were not sold out. There were lots of rooms available, but not everyone wanted to stay at a Motel 6. They all wanted the pool and the bigger rooms."

Two hours before the execution on May 16, some of those temporary residents—the ones from ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, Fox and Court TV—will have to select two reporters to witness the execution, sans recording devices, from among their ranks.

A third TV reporter, this one from Oklahoma City but not affiliated with the same network as the network representative, will witness McVeigh's death, as well, says Dash, a member of a media advisory committee. Dash said that reps from the other eligible local markets, Terre Haute and Indianapolis, deferred to Oklahoma City, where McVeigh's effect was deepest.

More than 600 miles west of the Terre Haute federal penitentiary, Oklahoma City faces the same challenge as Terre Haute. "I hope that, over time, this isn't what defines Oklahoma City," says KOCO-TV News Director Joe Hengemuehler. "The challenge is to make sure the victims are not forgotten and not to keep replaying the same video of the burned-out building. There is a strong sentiment in the journalistic community here that, at some point, we need to move on. But we have to cover the story."

—Dan Trigoboff