The man who has seen more US executions than anyone else

Associated Press reporter Michael Graczyk with some of many media credentials he has collected over his career, in Montgomery, Texas. Photos / AP

Michael Graczyk saw someone die for the first time in March 1984.

Graczyk, a reporter with the Associated Press, walked into a Texas prison to watch the execution of James David Autry, who had been sentenced to death for killing a convenience store clerk four years earlier.

Graczyk watched as Autry - a 29-year-old known as "Cowboy" who had been convicted of killing Shirley Droulet, a mother of five - took his final breaths.

It was the second time Graczyk had gone to the prison expecting to see Autry's execution; a few months earlier, a Supreme Court reprieve halted the lethal injection with the needles already in Autry's arms.

When it was over, after the lethal drugs were injected and after Autry's eyes fluttered open one last time, Graczyk sat down to write his story. His dispatch was circulated to readers across Texas and the US.

He wrote about how Autry had unsuccessfully tried to have his execution aired on television and about the heavy fog outside the prison and about Autry's final meal (a hamburger, fries and a Dr Pepper).

Not long after, Graczyk returned to the prison to witness another lethal injection, then another, and then so many he stopped counting.

His job as an AP reporter in Texas gave him a front-row seat to the epicentre of the American death penalty.

Across more than three decades, he has witnessed more than 400 executions, likely more than any other person in the US.

"I understand there's a certain curiosity that a lot of people have about that," Graczyk, 68, said. "It certainly comes up in conversations with people who want to know wow, what's that like. It's not something I generally bring up."

Today, Graczyk is scheduled to attend a lunch in Dallas in his honour and then retire from the wire service. He won't step away from covering executions entirely.

Graczyk lives near Houston, and he plans to help AP cover them as a freelancer since he lives not far from the death chamber in Huntsville, Texas.

But he will abandon the routine he had set up to cover executions, a process that started weeks before the actual lethal injections were scheduled to take place. He would seek interviews with the inmates as well as relatives of the victims, research the legal issues of the case and explore any appeals.

Graczyk emphasises that executions are not the only thing he has covered. Texas is "just a terrific place for news," he said.

But he also acknowledges that "there's a certain notoriety" that comes with being a regular witness to something most people will never see.

Michael Graczyk outside the Huntsville Unit before witnessing the execution of confessed killer Elroy Chester in Huntsville, Texas.

Some of what he saw remains seared into his brain, anecdotes he has revisited in public appearances and his writings. When Jonathan Nobles was executed in 1998 for a double murder, Nobles sang Silent Night and trailed off after singing about "round yon virgin, mother and child," Graczyk said.

"I am reminded of that every Christmas when I'm in church and the hymn is being sung," Graczyk said while driving to Dallas. "People are celebrating the joy of the season and I'm thinking of Jonathan Nobles."

He also thinks back to Autry's execution in 1984, when a woman who had become a pen pal of the inmate's cried about his "pretty brown eyes" shortly before those eyes reopened.

Since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976, the United States has executed 1479 people; 553 inmates - 37 per cent of the nation's total - have been executed in Texas. That's more than four times as many as the state (Virginia) with the second-most executions during that span (113), according to data kept by the Death Penalty Information Centre.

In recent years, executions have declined in Texas - and across the country - but the Lone Star State remains one of the nation's remaining bastions of capital punishment. Texas has executed eight people this year, the most nationwide. Just 18 states have executed at least that many people total since 1976, the Death Penalty Information Centre's numbers show.

"These things were extremely big news when they first started," Graczyk said. "They have kind of dwindled in the amount of attention that they get. I think it has primarily devolved into a local story where if the person who is executed committed the crime in your community, I think you are more likely to be more interested in the story."

He said: "It's important that someone who has no stake in the case, either the outcome or what happened, to be there. If the state's going to take a life . . . then it ought to be done properly, according to the rules of law."