Watching a convict die in 1999

Tomorrow, if heaven does not intervene, two death convicts will go to the execution chamber. This would be the first in almost five years. In 1999, the second year of the Estrada administration, about half a dozen were sent to Kingdom Come.

In July 1999 I was sent to cover the execution of Convict A who was sentenced to death for raping his daughters. (In deference to his family, I will not mention his name.) I think he was the third to die that year. I did write a news story the following day plus a column piece.

I am resurrecting excerpts from that column--for whatever they are worth--to remind what it was like for me and for those who were there. Here:

It’s been several days since I watched a convicted rapist die by lethal injection and I have yet to have a fitful night, experience horrible nightmares or lose my appetite. I watched a man die, or more precisely, being killed, and I didn’t lose any sleep? I find this disturbing.

I kept thinking—not ruminating, by the way—about it, even rewinding and playing the scene over and over in my mind. Still no tears, goose bumps or knots in my guts. The thing to do is to just let go of it, I told myself.

I have coped well. You see, it all looked like something straight out of a movie. I better rephrase that. I now suspect something in me made it all look like it was something from a movie. That way I would be able to take it and not be a mess. We all try, consciously or unconsciously, to fashion a coping mechanism when we have to face something stressful or dreadful. Only later do we process things.



The props helped. The curtains that were drawn, the wide one-way mirrors through which we saw everything, the multi-level seating arrangement, the semi-darkness where we sat, the silence, the speakers on the wall. We could have had popcorn. Somewhere in front of me was a young couple holding each other tight. I could hear someone sobbing softly.

Everything seemed to fit together, making the place look like a small screening room. It was as if we were watching a movie scene of a hospital or from ``Dead Man Walking’’. To borrow a movie title, we had a view to a kill.

Convict A did not simply die, his life was being ended. And yet we could not see who was actually doing that. He was not being shot, mutilated or electrocuted. He sure looked like he was dying by himself, peacefully breathing his last.

I remember veteran journalist Amando Doronila telling us what it was like to watch a man fry in the electric chair many years ago. Even the floor on which the witnesses stood was insulated with rubber to protect them from the power surge. People who lived in the prison compound still remember how their lights at home would flicker at around 3 p.m. on execution days.

The process is different now. If you were watching you would not be traumatized. It was not a revolting sight.

That is the problem. They have made it look easy and mess-free. Dr. Jack ``Euthanizer’’ Kevorkian would have approved. I have watched an autopsy process a couple of times, and a Caesarian operation, and they were harder on the stomach.

But there was a heartrending part which we, the witnesses, weren’t allowed to see: Convict A making his last few steps to the death chamber, laying down on the gurney, then being fastened with 14 straps, after which the needles were inserted into his blood vessels and the phlebotomists got ready to release the lethal substance.

I could only imagine all that. I had studied the execution manual line by line and even carried it in my bag that day.

When the curtains opened Convict A was all set to go. The only sign that he had just come from somewhere was the pair of red slippers he left near the wall. This man was actually walking a few seconds ago. Now, there he was looking like he was going under the knife. It looked that way until prison superintendent Gregorio Agaloos, clad in embroidered dark barong and standing near the head of Convict A, asked with a firm voice if the convict had some last words to say.

I was seated near the speaker but I couldn’t get all of what the condemned man was saying. The sedative had taken effect. That was the eerie part. You knew that that voice would never again be heard. After that was a series of sighs and heavy breathing and a last ``Diyos ko.’’

My eyes were glued on Convict A’s face, watching it change. Every now and then I glanced at his daughter and son-in-law and also at the clock. My ears were cocked for every slight sound. I was taking down notes but I managed to pray a ``Hail Mary.’’

Convict A’s face fell to one side, away from us. A commotion was heard and a voice rang out: ``Hold! Hold!’’ (My notebook has the time and the jagged words.) At first I thought someone was signaling the phlebotomist to stop the flow of the lethal drugs. But why in such a loud voice? And why did Agaloos rush out? We knew something was wrong.

When two persons in white entered the chamber, I thought they would try to revive Convict A. That would have been the dramatic part. I thought, would Convict A live to tell us about his near-death, out-of-body experience? What was it like to hover near the ceiling and look down on himself?

The doctors examined Convict A’s limp body and one of them announced that he was dead. The time of death was 3:11 p.m. The curtains were drawn, the sound system was turned off and we all rushed out. Everybody was asking, what was ``Hold! Hold!’’ about?

Well, as everybody seems to have realized, Convict A might still be alive right now but he is not because…the phones didn’t work. Too late the call.

Not walls but bridges

This first portion of this column I had initially put at the tail end but when I finished writing I decided to cut and paste it up here.

Hear ye. Be shocked. Be ecstatic. Fire-and-brimstone at its best. Jaro archbishop Angel Lagdameo’s message to the Promotion for Church People’s Rights congress this week is something so unlike most ecclesiastical missives. Is this real?

``Each day, because of poverty, there’s an increased widening of estrangement and alienation of the poor from the Church. Perhaps most people feel that the Church does not connect anymore with their language, their anguish and their struggles. When this happens, the Church crumbles from her very core! Such tendency to sanitize prophetic witness and practice faith only in convenience is the reason why we can lose our credibility and effectiveness in mission. And such indictment and challenge is pointed out by this powerful prayer that cries out:

``I simply argue that the cross be raised again/ At the center of the marketplace/ As well as the steeple of the church./ I am recovering the claim that/ Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral/ Between two candles:/ But on a cross between two thieves,/ On a town garbage heap/ At a crossroad of politics so cosmopolitan/ That they had to write his title in Hebrew and in Greek…/And at the kind of place where cynics talk smut/And thieves curse and soldiers gamble./Because that is where He died/ And that is what He died about/ That is where Christ’s men ought to be,/And what church people ought to be about.



``Yes, if we want to raise our prophetic voice to proclaim peace and justice, let us first build our solidarity with the masses. In effect, it is when we bring back the cross to Golgotha—that our loudest, clearest and most powerful witness will shine throughout the world!’’

The news about the walling out and walling in of people--with Palestinians on one side and Israelis on the other--to keep them out of each other’s hair was not lost on those who celebrated Christmas with the Holy Land in their thoughts. What a let-down that the place where Christmas began is now becoming a place of walls.

Early this month, bishops from bishops’ conferences from Europe and the Americas went to the Holy Land to see for themselves what was going on in Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Last week they issued a statement to amplify their cry for peace and to describe how the walls being constructed have added to the divisiveness.

``Not walls, but bridges,’’ the bishops cried after wading through the scene. They came, they said, to demonstrate the solidarity of Catholics throughout the world with the Church of the Holy Land. ``We have come in friendship for both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples, Christian, Jew and Muslim alike. We have seen the violence suffered by both communities: the attack against Israelis in Gaza and the collective punishment of Palestinian citizens. We express our condolences for the deaths that have occurred during out stay and affirm our opposition to all bloodshed.’’

The bishops said that the desire for peace, justice and reconciliation is great among Israelis and Palestinians, but regrettably, this is met with a lack of political will on the part of political leaders.

And so the wall. The bishops noted that the wall being built through the land and homes of Palestinian communities appears to be a permanent structure, dividing families, isolating them from their farmland and their livelihoods, and cutting off religious institutions. The bishops saw the frustration and humiliation undergone every day by Palestinians at checkpoints, which impede them from providing for their families, reaching hospital, getting to work, attending their studies and visiting their relatives.

And despite visible efforts, some priests, seminarians, sisters, brothers and lay personnel are being denied or are having difficulties in obtaining visas and residence permits to study and work in Israel and Palestinian territories.

These, the bishops pointed out, were impediments to the Churches’ mission to serve the people. And this was especially regrettable given the fact that the State of Israel and the Vatican have just marked ten years since the signing of their Fundamental Agreement.

The bishops hoped that their own journey would be an encouragement for others to visit the place where Jesus lived. To be a pilgrim is to become a witness to solidarity and reconciliation.

Recently, I caught the two-hour TV documentary ``The Land of Jesus’’ which gave one a sweeping historical, geographical, cultural and spiritual perspective on this turbulent place on earth. It was awesome. Not a dull moment there. It started with the time of Abraham and ended with the present, with the suicide bombings and all.

Last week, in the Vatican, Pope John Paul II, a leading Rome rabbi and the city’s imam sat side by side to watch the Concert of Reconciliation held at the vast Paul VI hall. Christians, Jewish and Muslim dignitaries were present. Parts of Gustav Mahler’s Second Symphony were performed by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and choruses from different countries.

Why Mahler, I thought, when he is so hard to understand. The affair was also the occasion for the world premiere of ``Abraham’’ a musical opus by John Harbison. I’d like to listen to that one. To Abraham, the Old Testament patriarch, Christianity, Judaism and Islam trace their roots.

Two weeks ago one reader who sent feedback to this column ended his letter by saying that ``the real axis of evil is Christianity, Islam and Judaism.’’ Aray.

Tiangge of hope

What a respite from all the bickering, grandstanding, and the self-promoting antics of politicians. Read their lips and their body language and what do they say?

Friday last week I waded into a virtual tiangge of hope, a flea market so to speak, brimming with creativeness and, most of all, with energy. That was the two-day ``Panibagong Paraan’’ the first Philippine Development Innovation Marketplace held at the Megatrade Hall of SM Megamall. The theme was ``making services work for the poor’’ and the key word was ``innovativeness’’.

For the first time, non-government and people’s organizations (NGO and PO) and institutions--or to use a more generic name, civil society groups--came together, this time, to sell their ideas. How were their services going to work for the poor?

More than a 117 (of the 121) finalists set up booths to display their vision translated into concrete projects that they hoped the World Bank and other funders/donors would ``buy’’ or be interested to help. I liken this big to-do to a tiangge or flea market because the participants were mostly community-based stakeholders, small in size but big on hope, big in heart. The atmosphere was both exciting and informal, unlike corporate trade fairs where people walk around in suits smelling of expensive cologne and speak business jargon.

From 1,800 applications from all over the country the 121 finalists/exhibitors were drawn. These finalists were selected on the basis of the following criteria: innovativeness, partnership, impact and cost-effectiveness, sustainability and replicability.



This batch of finalists was a representative mix from the urban sector (14 percent), agriculture and rural development (15 percent), biodiversity and climate change (9 percent), community-driven development and social development (14 percent), environment (11 percent), human development (23 percent) and enterprise development (13 percent).

These were spread out not so equally in Luzon (50 percent), Visayas (20 percent) and Mindanao (30 percent).

The 50 or so winners were announced at the end of the fair last Saturday and there was great rejoicing. The finalists had earlier been evaluated and prejudged by 33 jurors, all distinguished in their respective fields.

I was supposed to meet some of the lucky proponents last Monday and get familiar with their winning projects but the call I was waiting for never came. Anyway, the winning projects will be receiving P1 million each. P1 million for a project is not much but it can go a long way depending on the managerial creativity of the proponent. Those who did not make it can still hope to win the generosity of more than a dozen funding agencies that were there. I hope so!

I received the thick summary of proposals and reading just the project titles gave me a high. Reading on about the problems being addressed, beneficiaries, project sites, and the proponents’ way of arguing about the benefits, innovative ways, replicability and sustainability made me realize that there is so much energy out there. Now, if only the government and government officials could match these with their own, this country could really leap forward.

So much foreign aid has been poured into this country. And where are we?. Many funding agencies have turned their eyes to new frontiers. The Philippines is the NGO capital this part of the world. Teachers’ Village in Quezon City is the NGO capital of the Philippines with so many big NGOs maintaining their headquarters there. The street names there are Filipino words for Filipino traits like Masunurin, Malingap, Malakas, etc. One look at a roster of NGOs and their addresses and you’d know so many of them are clustered in the same place and that there are so many of them there. And there are more elsewhere.

Read on and smile. Here’s a sampler of project titles (not proponents). I picked them at random. Many of them are brain-teasers and tongue-twisters and they made me chuckle.

Community-based Peer-to-peer Extension of Reproductive Health Information, Education and Communication in the Que Pa Sa’an Ka Man Areas Around Metro Manila; Basilan Peace in Nature Protocol; My Books: My Pride and Joy for My Country’s Future; Building the Capacities of Church-based and Community-Based Mediators through Mentoring and Documentation of Cases; Creating Grassroots Corporate Ethos to Enhance Barangay Development; BT Ikot Tambayan STAR Children’s Program; Relodge Rice Technology Application for Multiple Rice harvesting from Single Planting; Diversified Farming Technology Utilizing System of Rice Intensification as an Enterprise Development Approach for Small Farmers in Nueva Ecija.

Sustainable Alternatives to Mangrove Destruction in Palawan, Integrating Community-based Economic and Enforcement Strategies for Conservation; Rainwater Harvesting for Drinking Water Supply in Tawi-Tawi; Coconut-based Livelihood Generation using Renewable Energy; Win a Scholarship Through the Collection of Recyclables and Frequently-generated Trash (Wishcraft); Empowering the Poor Through Good Governance; Roving Coco-husk Decorticator for the Poor Coconut Farmers in Less Accessible Areas; Large-Scale Cassava Farming; Strengthening of Access to Justice Systems and Community Development Agenda Formulation in 15 Barangays in Bukidnon.

I hope you didn’t end up befuddled but hopeful.

Mars landing

Have your ever caught yourself suddenly conscious that you were smiling? After being so engrossed with something you’re watching or listening to, you suddenly became conscious that your facial muscles have rearranged themselves to form a smile.

That’s what happened to me last Sunday afternoon while watching on TV the press briefing on the Spirit rover’s Mars landing. I was too engrossed it took some time for me to realize I was wearing a grin that didn’t want to go away. I wanted to freeze my grin and go to the mirror to see how silly I looked but I didn’t want to miss what the NASA team was saying to the media.

They were all in their work clothes, looking so casual, so bright, so scientist. Only the politicians were in dark suits. Everybody was in a celebratory mood, champagne flowed, there were cheers and tears. Murphy’s law didn’t apply this time and everything went perfect.

How could one not share their joy and triumph? I have always loved science stories like this, momentous breakthroughs that make one say, ``Things will never be the same again.’’

In fact mission manager Peter Theisinger said something like that. ``You have no idea how this feels,’’ he was quoted in print as saying. But I did catch him saying ``The world will never be the same again.’’ I had pen and paper and I was able to jot that down.



These guys weren’t made for TV like Carl Sagan, the astronomer-host who held people in thrall a decade or so ago with the blockbuster TV docu series ``Cosmos’’. But the NASA guys did great by just being themselves, groping for words to describe how they felt inside and doing away with astronomy jargon. Oh, but how I wished Sagan were alive to witness all this (he died in 1996 at the age of 62), for him to add a dash of stardust and mystical language to the commentary. Surely he would have been interviewed.

``The world will never be the same again.’’ It was a piece of rhetoric, I know, and I even agreed with Theisinger there. But it also hit me like a wayward Skylab piece hurtling to earth. (Remember Skylab? Filipino space freaks named places, vehicles and honky-tonk joints after it. Even Sputnik still lives on as pets and as a crime gang.)

Why did Theisinger’s words hit me so? Because the world is still very much the same as yesterday, wracked with pain and strife. If at all it isn’t the same, it is because it is worse in the trouble department.

During momentous events, like when humans first landed on the moon, or when great individuals were born or killed, it is always good to take note of what happened during that time. Where were you, what were you doing? What were the news headlines on the day of your birth? What was the world like when Jesus was born? What was the reach of the Roman empire?

Well thank God for historians, journalists and writers from all walks of life, we know many things.

Speaking of empires, my grin was all but wiped out when a thought crossed my mind. Will the Mars landing presage more human conquests in outer space that could give rise to planetary empires? Iyo ang Mars, akin ang Venus. Mars, the Red Planet, is named after the Roman god of war.

The mission to Mars is supposed to discover whether life forms once existed or could exist on the planet. The mission cost $820 million. I think about that and I couldn’t help thinking of CNN’s recently-aired ``Surviving Hunger’’ which was about one journalist’s 30-day participatory odyssey into the pit of hunger in Ethiopia, Planet Earth. By Day 20 or so, the video crew had to emergency feed the journalist, otherwise the documentary would end with his funeral. (He was chasing the flies away and whining all the time and I couldn’t help but be amused.)

The killjoys will say that we humans cannot even take good care of our own planet and here is the U.S. spending that staggering amount to explore Mars and search for signs of life. A search has in fact been going on for years now, not just on Mars but outside our solar system, not just for life but for extraterrestrial intelligence. I have this book ``First Contact: The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence’’ (SETI) written by the world’s leading astronomers who confront the question: are we alone in the universe?

I really hope to see life from out there in my own lifetime. This could throw out so many of our beliefs, shake our religious faith, challenge contemporary theology, make us appreciate our ecosystem. It could change the way we look at ourselves and all of creation, and most of all, the way we treat one another. Maybe it is worth all that expense?

To recall, the space draft Voyager was launched in 1977, to explore deep space outside of our solar system, for millions of years. It is now journeying through billions of stars, to the edge of the universe so to speak, hoping to find a finder. It is carrying a record that contains 118 pictures, music, human voices, greetings in 54 languages (including several Filipino languages), sounds of earth, etc. The book ``Murmurs of the Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record’’ is about this effort.

Wrote Sagan): ``No one sends such a message on such a journey without a positive passion for the future. For all the possible vagaries of the message, any recipient could be sure that we were a species endowed with hope and perseverance, at least a little intelligence, substantial generosity and a palpable zest to make contact with the cosmos.’’

We want to find, and we also want to be found. But all that exploration of alien landscapes should also lead us to our own inner landscape, to discover what is good and to root out the evil that lie hidden there.#