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A silent, somber ritual of justice: Witnessing an execution
Times reporter recounts experience at execution, killers final moments
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"I was becoming more and more conscious of my heavy breathing in the back of our five-person transport. A handful of times, I glanced toward the passengers in the fellow vans, wondering how they were connected to Spears. What brought them to this middle Georgia institution on a Wednesday night as armed guards stood at the ready?" - photo by Photo illustration by SCOTT ROGERS
With my eyes on a man taking his last breaths, all I could hear were my own. It was a state-sanctioned event sponsored by silence. Nothing about the day and how it started seemed markedly different than the past 300 or so in a line of work at the intersection of death and disaster.