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Executions ruling may affect state The Associated Press
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federal appeals court ruling requiring executions be fully open to public witnesses — including the insertion of IVs for lethal injection — could still have ramifications in two Western states that have kept part of their inmate executions from public view. Washington state officials are still reviewing the ruling and say they have no immediate plans to change their execution procedures because they have no executions scheduled. Officials in Montana, meanwhile, say they haven’t reviewed the ruling because they also have no executions scheduled. Arizona and Idaho, where the legal case originated, changed their procedures in two recent executions as a result of the ruling. But whether a legal fight over the issue now looms in Washington and Montana remains to be seen. “This is certainly something we’re evaluating right now,” said Sherilyn Peterson, a defense attorney who has previously challenged Washington’s death penalty protocol on behalf of condemned inmates. “It’s a good time because there isn’t an execution scheduled, so if there is going to be a case, better to do it now than wait until the last minute,” she said. Today, nearly all of the 34 states using lethal injection restrict access to half of every execution, shielding from view the moment the condemned enters the death chamber and when the IV lines are inserted.
AUGUST 2012
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EDITORIAL
Public should know how Sunnyside spends money Yakima Herald-Republic
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unnyside’s city government has received some good advice from state Auditor Brian Sonntag and the state Attorney General’s office: The more open the government, the better the government, especially when it involves the taxpayer’s dime. Recall that the Auditor’s Office on June 29 gave a draft report of a private audit exit interview to the city; the audit studied the city’s 2010-11 finances, and some council members expected the report to find fault with how money has been handled. We don’t know if that was the case, thanks to a crafty gambit by Interim City Manager Frank Sweet. When a representative of the state Auditor’s
Office presented the report, Sweet scheduled the meetings with council members in shifts to avoid having a quorum. A meeting with a quorum would have required a public notice — and opened the possibility that the public would learn how its elected officials are spending its money. Neither Sonntag nor Tim Ford, the open government ombudsman for the state Attorney General’s Office, would go so far as calling the separate meetings illegal. But both did recommend that the interview should be public. Ford suggested a do-over; Sonntag did not. He said if he had been asked beforehand, he would have recommended the meetings be open. “Any time they’re meeting in a professional set-
ting or a setting to discuss city business, I’m saying the doors ought to be open,” Sonntag told the Yakima Herald-Republic. Sunnyside officials have had their recent problems with governance. Earlier this year, the city manager and police chief suddenly announced their retirements; city officials clashed over a $50,000 outside review of the police department; City Hall staff and supervisors formed a union, but negotiations have gone slowly. Mark Gervasi, the city manager who retired after only 18 months on the job, offered to stay longer and provide continuity on the job, but the council brought in Sweet, who had his own controversial departure as Selah city supervisor. Council members never explained why
they took this course. And now they won’t explain why they don’t want details of the audit to go public, except to rely on the argument that it’s not illegal. But that doesn’t mean it’s right. While some council members fear the report will make them look bad, their secrecy combined with past controversies make them look worse. Council members would do well to heed the sound advice coming from two state agencies and let the public know how its money is being managed. Members of the Yakima Herald-Republic editorial board are Sharon J. Prill, Bob Crider, Frank Purdy and Karen Troianello. Reprinted with permission.
WINNER AT THE GUN A creative viewpoint of a record-breaking race won second place for Mike Dashiell and the Sequim Gazette in the Color Sports Action Category, Circulation Group III of the 2011 Washington Better Newspaper Contest. Michael Dashiell/ Sequim Gazette
In the wake of Paterno: Where did our skepticism go?
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ommentators, curmudgeons, sages, analysts, columnists, pundits, experts, gurus and other species of the learned, the enlightened and the astute have all far outstripped my abilities to extract moral, ethical and ills-ofsociety lessons from the sordid Penn-State-Jerry-SanduskyJoe-Paterno debris, so I’ll just stick to exploring a weakness of journalism. I am not pointing fingers at anyone, but rather pointing out that we – reporters, editors, writing coaches, et al. – too often want to believe in the goodness of mankind. As much as we swaggeringly boast of our thick skins, our hard edges, our skepticism-borderingon-sneering-distrust, our rejection of the status quo and our disdain for authority, we journalists are, deep in our hearts, idealists, even dreamers. As proof, I offer what I once overheard an editor say to a group of his subordinates: “Every day, I think we’re going to produce the perfect newspaper, and every day, we fall short, but every day, I wake up and think, ‘This is the day we’re going to make it happen.’” Even those of us who didn’t care for JoePa’s brand of sanc-
timony – the football coach who transcended sport to become the glowing symbol of a renowned university – acknowledged Jim Stasiowksi that he won without violating NCAA rules on recruiting. Our mistake is that we applied his honesty and integrity in coaching to his whole life. We saw him do good things for his university – he raised hundreds of millions of dollars, and not for sports teams, but for education at Penn State – so we assumed he deserved to be revered. The problem, it seems, is that he thought so too. And so, when a true moral crisis surfaced, one that could have damaged his carefully cultivated image of perfection, he choked like a freshman cornerback. He panicked. He played a desperate, gambling defense, the kind that breaks down eventually. I’m not saying all journalists deserve blame for not seeing the flesh-and-blood, flawed Joe behind the impervious bronze
statue. Certainly, Sara Ganim of the Patriot-News in Harrisburg, who doggedly followed and uncovered Sandusky’s trail of evil, showed that a skeptical, aggressive reporter still can do more than just get good stories. She can reroute history. What I am saying, however, is that, in general, we journalists too often fail to question the images presented for public consumption. And many of our failures are in the realm of sports. As a new (can’t say young; I was 28 at the time) reporter in Florida, I failed to heed my own conscience when I witnessed a well-respected manager of a Little League baseball team browbeat his young players, and I wrote nothing about it. In the 30-plus years that have passed since that event, I have rationalized my irresponsibility in a million ways: Maybe he was just having a bad day. Maybe the players’ parents had pleaded with him to be the ultimate tough-love manager. Maybe he was handed the most incorrigible collection of bratty boys and asked to straighten them out. Maybe, maybe … maybe if I had written about his borderline-cruelty, he would have been tossed as a manager,
and some boys who grew up scared and humiliated would have better lives today. A dozen years ago, I was reading a story about a perennial-championship summer-league softball team of teenage girls. After 15 or 18 glowing paragraphs detailing all that success, one feisty girl spoke out, saying she had quit the team because of the relentless pressure. She loved playing, and she loved her teammates; but she said there were so many games, so many tournaments, that the sport had become a grind. She flat-out blamed the coaches. It was one paragraph of bright candor obscured by clouds of cotton candy. I said to the reporter, “This girl comes across as thoughtful, credible, not a whiner. You should look into whether the coaches are demanding too much, turning a sport into drudgery.” The sportswriter said he wouldn’t do that story. Disappointed, I pitched the same idea to that newspaper’s investigative reporter, an avid sports fan with a heightened conscience. He too turned it down. If we continue to think that sports are nothing more than di-
versions, not serious enough for serious journalism, we are inviting the serial depravity of another Sandusky, the narcissistic cowardice of another Paterno, the engorged self-images of more adults seeking glory by pressuring kids who just want to enjoy playing. We’re journalists. We need to be alert, curious, suspicious, skeptical. Dangers lurk everywhere, not just in dark alleys, but also in sun-splashed stadiums outside of which stand bronze statues. Examining a statue is fruitless; it is the human being who must be tested for feet of clay. THE FINAL WORD: The mere sight of some incorrect usages gives me a headache, and one of the near-lethal ones is this spelling of the adverb: “publically.” Are dictionaries so far out of vogue that no one bothers any longer to look up the word and see that it is “publicly”? Jim Stasiowski, writing coach for The Dolan Company, welcomes your questions or comments. Call him at 775 3542872 or write to 2499 Ivory Ann Drive, Sparks, Nev. 89436.