Prison portraits from retiring AP reporter Michael Graczyk, who observed 400+ executions

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Prison portraits from retiring AP reporter Michael Graczyk

Before every Texas execution, Michael Graczyk has asked to talk to the convict scheduled to die. If the person said yes, he would visit death row to interview and take a photo of them. He also attempted to contact the family members of the person killed by the condemned inmate and the lawyers involved.

Graczyk retires Tuesday after a 45-year career in which he observed more than 400 executions. A selection of the images and people Graczyk found to be particularly memorable: Henry Lee Lucas, Michael Rodriguez, Kenneth Foster, Cleve Foster, Lester Bower and Jerry Hartfield. ​

 

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2009 Spanish-language feature on him.

The biggest expert in executions: The scarecrow journalist

Translation by Google:

The week smelled of death: three planned executions in Huntsville, the lethal capital of Texas. Michael Graczyk made the mat from Houston and there he stood, with no other spirit than to fulfill his duty to report promptly through the AP agency: "My job is to tell the story."

An inmate, Gerald Cornelius Elridge, was saved along the way and managed a 90-day reprieve thanks to his defender's appeal. Two others, Danielle Simpson and Robert Lee Thompson, did not have that luck, and that Governor Rick Perry had in his power to commute the death of Thompson to life imprisonment.

But we already know how they are spent in Texas. After all, Perry is nothing more than the continuator of a 'tradition' that George Bush also applied to the letter. With 23 executions, Texas is responsible for half of the prisoners executed so far this year in the United States .​

 

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Here's the Houston Chronicle's story on his career and retirement.

It's really good.

bbm

After covering more than 400 executions, AP’s Graczyk calls it quits

On April 20, 1980, J.D. “Cowboy” Autry shot to death a priest and a store clerk in a dispute over the price of a six-pack of beer.

When he was put to death four years later, the Jefferson County killer offered no final statement — though a female admirer witnessing the grim affair moaned and wailed as the drugs took effect and the 29-year-old became the state’s second execution of the modern era.

There were about two dozen TV cameras waiting outside the Huntsville death chamber when the witnesses emerged after midnight. Ready to address them all with a pool report was Mike Graczyk, the Associated Press reporter covering his first execution.

Since that day in 1984, Graczyk has covered well over 400 more — though he doesn’t keep exact count.

He was there when the state put to death pickaxe-murderess Karla Faye Tucker. And high-profile prisoner Gary Graham. And Angel Resendiz, the "Railroad Killer."

Over 35 years, Graczyk’s byline has become synonymous with death penalty coverage in the state most enamored of it.

But now, after spending a few dozen hours of his life watching people die, Graczyk is retiring from the full-time staff of the newswire service that spreads his reports to media outlets across the nation.

“I just wanna wind down and get off the treadmill, at least initially,” he said. “As of July 31, I’ll have logged 16,753 days of AP tenure.”
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