EXECUTION

by Denny Simmons
Evansville Courier and Press
Staff Photographer

To be honest I was the photographer who went to my editors and asked to cover the Timothy McVeigh execution. I thought it would be a good chance to cover a story that had national historic value. But, like happens a lot in our line of work, the story, or the idea of what the story was, started changing for me.

We had a couple of meetings with a designer, features editor, news editor, two reporters and myself to try and iron everything out. We looked for every local angle we could come up with that had even the thinnest thread to connect to McVeigh (as did many other media outlets, I'm sure). One of the prosecuting attorneys used to be from Evansville. A granddaughter to one of the victims played softball at the local university when it happened. That was about it. Pretty good word stories, but not the best picture stories.

We also tried to tackle the question of capital punishment. That's where our features reporter (ethics and religion) got into the act. Maureen Hayden mentioned a murder from 32 years ago where a man's daughter was killed while babysitting. The murderer was sentenced to only seven years due to a prosecuting attorney's paperwork snafu and this understandably angered the father of the girl. After years and years of living a hate-filled, bitter life that caused him to move from Evansville to a small Kentucky town, he had a change of heart. In order to save himself, and I believe his eternal soul, he realized he must forgive the murderer before he could continue with his life.

Burning his candle at both ends, Paul Stevens divides his time between speaking engagements at schools and churches in the Tri-State and visiting the penitentiary in Eddyville, Ky. © Denny Simmons/Evansville Courier and Press

That was a pretty hard concept for me to comprehend, but especially for the men on Kentucky's death row where he began a lay ministry more than 15 years ago. At 80 years of age, he's still visiting the prison population one day a week and is the most trusted, respected and loved man in the prison. Needless to say, Paul Stevens became the focus of MY reporting. Oh yeah, Paul is also friends with Bud Welch, a man who lost loved ones in the Oklahoma City bombing, but lobbied against McVeigh's execution.

Paul Stevens of Dawson Springs, Ky., makes his way slowly but steadily up the steep steps at the Kentucky State Penitentiary in Eddyville, Ky. Although he had to stop for a breather about halfway to the top, Stevens still makes the climb once a week to visit with the facility's inmates on death row. © Denny Simmons/Evansville Courier and Press

Paul Stevens says when he makes his rounds at the penitentiary, his daughter, Cindy Stevens, is with him. Before her murder, she was planning to become a missionary and work with Native Americans in the Dakotas. © Denny Simmons/Evansville Courier and Press

Whew. I guess I started rambling off the subject of McVeigh a little bit, but really I didn't get too far off mark. Since doing Paul's story I guess I had a higher expectation about the coverage I was planning on McVeigh. I was a little worried. OK, I was a lot worried about how to go about covering this thing. I corresponded with some friends (also photographers) to figure out how best to go at this thing.

I obviously wasn't going to get any access to the prison to photograph McVeigh. We also don't have much in the way of resources to compete with the monster newspapers, magazines and television. What could we do that was different?

I began to wonder why we should send a local photographer at all since AP could do about the same thing I could do. Of course, I do love a challenge, so this was something I was determined to not let get the better of me. Well...it did.

I arrived on Friday with Ryan Reynolds, the reporter on the event, and began to survey the situation. From all reports (by us, the media) this was going to be a major fiasco. The motels and hotels were all supposed to be overflowing. Restaurants were supposed to be pushed to the brink catering to everybody's needs. Basically, everyone thought there would be nothing left of Terre Haute at the end of the execution except tumbleweeds and empty fast-food wrappers. Well, it wasn't necessarily so. Terre Haute isn't the tiny town it was painted to be. It has plenty of services. I doubt the media made much more of an impact than the soccer tournament or the marine band landing did. Oh, except for the lucky folks who owned homes across from the prison. They were making quite the profit from renting out their property for parking.

On Saturday we did pretty much the same thing. We looked for stories and subjects. But again, nothing was really happening. We not so quickly realized that we could have arrived on Sunday (and Ryan not missed his first-year wedding anniversary) and covered the story just as well.

Sunday afternoon was when things began to happen. Staged event here...staged event there, etc. The only problem was nobody was participating in the events. OK, some people were, but not the throngs we had expected. A march from a local church to the prison grounds had media outnumbering the participants.

Two local parks were designated as anti-death penalty and pro-death penalty camps, but the "pro" camp only had three people congregating. Just about the only thing to photograph was the other photographers walking around looking for something...anything to photograph to send back to their publications.

Just around midnight the prison grounds were opened to the public. One area for the "pro" group. Another, about 300 yards away, for the "anti" group. And finally, the media area, about 150 yards from the "anti" area. They had all of us so separated that covering this without a golf cart (which some of the lucky ones had) was like running a marathon. All night long buses arrived on scene every half-hour dropping off five or six demonstrators. As it got closer and closer to the time of the execution the bus loads became larger (10-15 at a time). By 7 a.m., the demonstrators were (and this is a guesstimate) about 300 "anti"; 100 "pro"; and 1,000 media (I heard 1,400 journalists were credentialed).

Jamerica Bevel, 4, of Chicago, Ill., waits with her friend, Judith Schram who is with the Council of Mothers out of Chicago, for the protest march to begin at St. Margaret Mary Church (Catholic) in Terre Haute, Ind., Sunday evening. The march was held to protest the execution of Timothy McVeigh. © Denny Simmons/Evansville Courier and Press

Journalists at St. Margaret Mary Church (Catholic) in Terre Haute, Ind., Sunday evening. The march was held to protest the execution of Timothy McVeigh. The journalists outnumbered the demonstators by a large margin. © Denny Simmons/Evansville Courier and Press

Throughout the night I found it hard to make pictures. All of the demonstrators seemed so professional... like they'd done this many times before. Some of the demonstrators you could tell were there just to get on TV and really played it up for us. And, if anything happened at all, a multitude of photographers were on it immediately. It was like a press conference at the White House when the President scratches his ear and all you hear is the sound of 50 cameras going off to capture the gesture.

The 11 p.m. briefing by U.S. Penitentiary at Terre Haute, Ind., Warden Harley Lappin. Timothy McVeigh's last meal request was announced as two pints of mint chocolate chip ice cream. © Denny Simmons/Evansville Courier and Press

One hundred and sixty-eight minutes before the scheduled execution of Timothy McVeigh, anti-death penalty protesters formed a spiraled circle and sat in silent prayer until 7 a.m. © Denny Simmons/Evansville Courier and Press

The scene became even more surreal at dawn. A big cloud became visible as light approached and showed pink. I heard one person say it was the hand of God. Then it rained on us for a bit, even though the sun was shining brightly (there were no rainbows that morning). At 7 a.m. all you could hear were camera shutters over the silent prayer circle made by the "anti" group

Wendy Gingerich of Branson, Mo., faces the U.S. Penitentiary at Terre Haute, Ind., Monday morning as the time left before Timothy McVeigh's execution draws closer. She spent the night sketching the event for a possible future book. The gentleman napping on the left is Dwight Conquergood. The anit-death penalty protesters had spent all night on the penitentiary grounds. © Denny Simmons/Evansville Courier and Press

Pro-death penalty demonstrators, Eric White, left, and Greg Bradrick, both of Fredricktown, Ohio, made the trip to Terre Haute, Ind., to attend Timothy McVeigh's execution to "take part in history." © Denny Simmons/Evansville Courier and Press

As the watch on an anti-death penalty protester reads 7 a.m., all that could be heard was the sound of cameras clicking and motors winding. © Denny Simmons/Evansville Courier and Press

By 7:10 a.m., in the other camp, a small group formed to chant for television and still cameras "Rot in Hell, McVeigh" "Rot in Hell, McVeigh". They were all laughing and smiling like they were at a homecoming rally. Again, I didn't make any pictures. I'm writing this and I can't believe I didn't, but at the time I was feeling a little sick about the whole thing.

After all was said and done I was glad to go home.Covering this story was good for one thing; it made me reevaluate myself; my newspaper; and the media as a whole.

I now realize why I work at a medium-size newspaper in the Midwest (my fourth newspaper job in my eight years in the profession) where the photographers don't travel in packs and our subjects aren't so media savvy. I feel like our pictures turn out to be more honest when we're not being put through the hoops by the media handlers and especially our subjects.

Denny Simmons

dsimmons@evansville.net