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The sun was shining.
Spring was in the air, the weather was warm.
I was on the edge of a baseball field scouting a Division I college team to help the coach when I bumped into someone else who was escaping the office life that afternoon for refuge in America's favorite pastime.
It was Rick Bragg, who at the time was a recent Pulitzer Prize winner as a reporter with the New York Times.
Rick also authored several best-selling books, including "All Over but the Shoutin."
He is a man who has a way with words.
It had been a while since I had seen Rick, so I asked him about any exciting assignments of late.
We both had an interest in international reporting and had traveled the world, although his story list and readership numbers dwarfed mine. I wrote post cards compared to his novels.
He looked scrungy and tired that day, but hey, that was Rick Bragg.
The last time I'd seen him, he looked the same when we ate barbecue lunch together one day.
"So, any exciting stories lately?" I asked.
"No travel, but big stories," he said.
I sensed he wasn't very excited about the last one. What was that last assignment, I asked.
"I covered the Timothy McVeigh execution," he said. "That was kind of tough."
Rick is a tough guy himself.
He has seen death and mayhem in more than one venue, so I didn't believe him seeing the execution of one of America's most infamous domestic terrorists, the guy linked to the
There had to be something more to it.
There was.
***
"I can't believe how some people get so emotional about an execution," he said, or something similar, as I recall.
He wasn't talking about the obvious, those who feel all death by man's hands is wrong, those who are victims, or those who so much value life even for a convicted killer.
He knew to expect that.
What he was talking about was the problem of having to balance those emotions with the raw emotions of those who reveled in death, those who salivated at the mouth like a wolf closing in for the kill, those whose anger sparked fear of its own as it showed the worst of human nature, as Rick would say.
It was being caught in the middle of that emotional tidal wave that had this Pulitzer Prize-winning veteran reporter a bit disappointed and frustrated with his fellow man.
Then, there was Timothy McVeigh, himself.
McVeigh was a U.S. Army veteran who in 1995 bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City on the second anniversary of the Waco Siege. He wanted revenge against a government he felt was one of tyranny and abuse.
So he blew up a federal building and killed 168 innocent people.
It was the deadliest act of terrorism within the United States until the New York attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Timothy McVeigh was executed on June 11, 2001.
***
Gov. Bill Richardson signed legislation on Wednesday that ended the death penalty in New Mexico.
He did so after getting caught in that same crossfire of emotions, with fierce arguments from both sides: those for and against the death penalty.
That is why he waited until the last possible day to sign the legislation passed by lawmakers last week. He had a midnight deadline to make his decision.
"Regardless of my personal opinion about the death penalty, I do not have confidence in the criminal justice system as it currently operates to be the final arbiter when it comes to who lives and who dies for their crime," Richardson said. "If the state is going to undertake this awesome responsibility, the system to impose this ultimate penalty must be perfect and can never be wrong."
New Mexico has an interesting history with executions.
Between 1846-1913, when New Mexico was a territory and not yet a state, there were 51 legal executions, all by hanging.
The key word is "legal" executions. County sheriffs were charged with the task for many years before the state took control.
However, in more recent times, the state was hesitant to execute, with only a handful carried out since the 1950s.
Supporters of an execution penalty argue that it helps deter crime, it helps garner confessions and information from criminals who fear it, and that it is the appropriate punishment for murder.
Opponents argue that it is wrong for anyone to take the life of another, and especially when there could be doubt about the innocence of someone convicted and placed on death row.
Only two men sit on death row today in New Mexico: Robert Fry of Farmington and Timothy Allen of Bloomfield.
***
Should the decision of life and death be one for man or woman to decide?
It's an age-old argument, and one not confined to debate of the death penalty but one that also involves abortion, war and sometimes privilege.
Perhaps Rick was right when he viewed the McVeigh case as a microscope on human nature.
In his lingo, "it ain't always pretty."
The debate does, however, remind us of the value of life.
I distinctly remember one of the first murder cases I covered as a journalist in a courtroom.
I've shared the story before, and it remains firmly implanted in my mind. It involved the trial of a young man who had killed others, taking much to rob them of little.
When the day of reckoning arrived, I found myself sitting on the front row.
A woman sat in tears to my left, another on my right.
One was the mother of the victim, the other was the mother of the defendant.
It was cold in the courtroom, and both women were shivering in nerves and the chill. I started to take off my suit coat to offer it to one of them, but then I paused.
With whom should I share it?
I kept my coat and a realization.
We all were victims that day.
Troy Turner is the editor of The Daily Times. He can be contacted at P.O. Box 450, Farmington, N.M., 87499; or at tturner@daily-times.com.
