WITNESS

Sin and redemption in America's death chambers

- Elizabeth Bruenig

Lately, I’ve been having dreams about my own execution. The nightmares mostly unfold in the same way: I am horrified to discover that I’ve committed a murder—the victim is never anyone I know but always has a face I've seen somewhere before. I cower in fear of detection, and wonder desperately if I should turn myself in to end the suspense. I am caught and convicted and sentenced to death. And then I’m inside an execution chamber like the ones I’ve seen many times, straining against the straps on a gurney, needles in both arms. I beg the executioner not to kill me. I tell him my children will be devastated—and somehow I know they're watching from behind a window that looks like a mirror. I feel the burn of poison in my veins. After that comes emptiness.

Maybe everyone dreams of dying, even if not in quite this way. I once had nightmares about being a victim of crime, but after I began witnessing executions, I came to imagine myself on some subconscious plane as the perpetrator instead. This is perhaps a result of overidentification with the men I've watched die—and my understanding of the Christian religion, in which we're all convicted sinners. I’m particularly interested in forgiveness and mercy, some of my faith’s most stringent dictates. If those forms of compassion are possible for murderers, then they're possible for everyone.

These questions, combined with a murder that tore into my own family, inspired me, several years ago, to volunteer to witness an execution—one of 13 carried out at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, during the final six months of Donald Trump's first term. Most of the 23 states that still have an active death penalty allow a certain number of journalists to witness executions, as does the federal government. I sent an application to the appropriate federal office and, somewhat to my surprise, it was approved.