Tonight, Associated Press reporter Micahel Graczyk goes to work in Huntsville, Texas.
Reporters bear witness to history but what Graczyk has witnessed is not for the faint of heart.
The state of Texas is scheduled to execute its 500th inmate since the death penalty was brought back to the United States as an option for individual states in the mid-1970s. Of those 500 executions in Texas, Graczyk has witnessed more than 300 of them since covering these deaths became his beat as a reporter in 1984.
While he writes about far more than just executions, it's his work covering them that has made him a living legend among reporters. His work is clear, concise and crammed with knowledge and experience. Most importantly, if he has a bias for or against the death penalty, it's impossible to detect in his thorough and balanced stories.
Having witnessed so many executions, he has become a story himself but he always politely refuses to answer the one question he's always asked - are you for or against the death penalty?
The fact he's even asked speaks to the quality of his work, which is on full display on page 16 of today's Citizen. A reporter's reporter, he covers each one with the same gravitas.
As his story explains, Texas and 31 other states have the death penalty option. While many of those states have all but stopped using capital punishment, Texas has gone the other direction. About every three weeks, the state of Texas puts an inmate to death. No other state comes even close to the number executed or the frequency of executions.
Tonight's execution isn't just newsworthy because of the gruesome milestone. Kimberley McCarthy will be the first woman to die as punishment for her crimes in the United States in three years and just the 13th woman in the modern death penalty era to face execution.
Capital punishment remains a divisive issue in Canada, even though the last executions happened just over 50 years ago and the death penalty has been off the books since 1976. Every time there is a Robert Pickton, a Paul Bernardo or a Clifford Olson, there is a renewed cry for permanent justice.
Death penalty advocates once insisted that killing criminals as a form of punishment served as a form of deterrence but that argument has long since evaporated. Murder rates have far more to do with poverty, education, drugs and number of police officers on the street than it does with the state's ability to kill evil citizens.
The same advocates then moved on to talk about the death penalty as a punishment that fit the crime but that's also an argument filled with holes. If death is the price for murder, what's the suitable punishment for rape? Sexual abuse? Child abuse? Extortion? Fraud? Dangerous driving?
The death penalty has always been about vengeance, for both the victims and the broader society. When someone's crimes are so horrible that they not only cause irreparable harm to individuals but break the community's ability to forgive, the death penalty is brought forward. Sometimes, there's even an argument of mercy to it. Neither Pickton or Bernardo will ever be free again so why not kill them and put them out of their misery?
That's nearly convincing, except how does the standard get applied? If her execution goes ahead tonight, it will be McCarthy's punishment for beating and stabbing an old woman to death during a robbery to fuel her addiction to crack cocaine. Does she deserve to die as much as monsters like Pickton or Bernardo?
What's truly horrific about executions in Texas is that they happen so often that they rarely make news anymore. Unless the inmate's crimes were high profile, they warrant little more than a mention. Graczyk's work usually gets buried deep these days, until times like these.
Whether or not McCarthy dies tonight by lethal injection, Graczyk will be there to witness it and report her final moments to the broader world, leaving the rest of us to wonder whether the world is really any brighter or safer for killing a person to atone for their crimes.
