An Executioner’s Task
Michael Selsor will soon die by homicide. The US Supreme Court this week declined to hear the Oklahoma death row inmate’s case. When I interviewed Selsor in 2010, he seemed resigned to his execution. This week’s decision removed its final legal hurdle.
If calling Selsor’s death by lethal injection homicide sounds loaded, then I suggest you complain to the Sate of Oklahoma. Upon Selsor’s passing, the state will issue a death certificate as it does for every person who dies in Oklahoma. For Micheal Selsor the cause of death will be listed as homicide, a fact that the head of the Oklahoma prison system, Justin Jones, admitted was ‘ironic’ when I interviewed him for this episode of Fault Lines.
I plan to attend Selsor’s execution, if I’m in the country, which has stirred quite a debate among my colleagues. I believe one of the most important responsibilities of a journalist is to bear witness—especially to such grave events in which so very few are permitted.
Yet I dread doing this.
Selsor, condemned for murdering a convenience store clerk, Clayton Chandler, during a robbery 37 years ago, told me he had not had a visitor in ten years, so I doubt many, if any, family or supporters will witness his killing. I wonder if after all this time Chandler’s surviving family members will come to see the sentence carried out?
I imagine it will be a little-attended, quiet affair. An executioner’s task. A scheduled homicide in the name of justice for an electorate who demands, but will hardly notice it.
Vespertine Hour
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"To my own ear, I sound hyperpoetic, and I don't mean to exaggerate these vespertine moods; I think that this restlessness that I am describing was really quite ordinary." ~Peter Gadol, The Long Rain
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"To my own ear, I sound hyperpoetic, and I don't mean to exaggerate these vespertine moods; I think that this restlessness that I am describing was really quite ordinary." ~Peter Gadol, The Long Rain
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