SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — Shortly after midnight on Thursday, Taberon Honie was executed by lethal injection, marking Utah’s first capital punishment in over a decade.
Because executions are rare in Utah, there has been intense media coverage of Honie’s case, and seven journalists are preparing to witness his execution in a matter of hours. ABC4’s Sarah Murphy will be one of seven journalists to watch the death setence be carried out.
To get insight into what viewing an execution is like, ABC4 spoke with Michael Graczyk, a journalist who has observed more than 400 executions in Texas for the Associated Press.
He said that it’s important for journalists to watch an execution to make sure it’s done properly and report if there are any mishaps or irregularities.
“I just think it’s important that someone who is independent watch this process because it is important and it is significant,” he said. “The state is taking someone’s life.”
During his more than four decades with the news service, he’s likely witnessed more executions than anyone else since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. In his reporting, Graczyk has spoken with death row inmates, their relatives, and the families of the victims.
While all death row cases are different, there are a few common denominators, Graczyk said. One is that victims’ families think the death penalty process takes too long. Often, a single case can take decades to go through the appeals process.
“When a case takes 25 or 30 years to come to a conclusion, some of the drama of it fades away,” he said.
Graczyk also said that most of the death row inmates he interviewed never acknowledge having committed the crime. Of the ones who did, none of them said that Texas having the death penalty factored into their actions.
“To a person, I’ve yet to find one who said ‘I knew there was the death penalty in Texas but I did it anyway,’” Graczyk said.
Texas is the most active death penalty state in the U.S. In the modern death penalty era, the Lone Star State has executed 588 inmates, with two executions having happened already this year.
With executions being so frequent in Texas, Graczyk said that they only register as a blip on the radar in terms of media coverage. Generally, they only make headlines in the city where the crime might have happened.
In contrast, the execution of Honie will be the eighth death sentence carried out in Utah since 1976. The last person executed in the state was Ronnie Lee Gardner in 2010. He was killed by firing squad.
Graczyk said that he’s lost count as to how many executions he’s covered as a reporter.
“Texas kept carrying out executions, and I kept covering the story,” he said. “The numbers kept mounting.”
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