It takes a while to get out of the prison. On the way in, we had to show identification at what seemed like a multitude of checkpoints, some only about three feet apart. And we have to go through it all again on the way outside. As we walk, Pastor Fife tells Van Cott not to blame himself, that he did everything he could.
This is the first execution the pastor has seen, and he seems to be taking it well.
But it's all front, for other people's sake. I know. I seem to be taking it well, too, and I'm not.
A friend drove me to Florence because he heard me say I didn't think I'd be stable enough to drive myself back to Phoenix. My friend is not allowed to park at the prison, so he's waiting for me down the road, near a candlelight vigil of about 40 or 50 people. While he waits, he gets talking to a man who's also waiting. The man tells my friend he's driven Fife up from Tucson, because he didn't think the clergyman would be in good enough shape to drive himself.
Van Cott offers to drive me to where my friend is waiting. But first he has to make a phone call. I stand outside and watch other witnesses coming out. One of them is Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley, chatting with officials and laughing all over his face. Perhaps this is how he likes to spend his evenings.
"I guess this whole process must be hard on you guys," I remark to a prison official, a man in his 50s.
"Yeah," is all he says.
A shuttle bus comes up to where Van Cott and I are standing.
"Taxi?!" the driver says with fake brightness.
"That's what we need," I say with equal falseness. He gives us a ride to the parking lot, where Van Cott left his car. Van Cott had planned to take me the quarter-mile or so to where my friend is parked, but my friend has found his way to the prison parking lot and is waiting for me.
My friend and I stop at a Circle K. Pastor Fife is there with his designated driver, looking a lot less hearty than he did earlier.
"We're all diminished by it," he says. "It's barbaric."
Before he leaves, he tells me I have to take care of myself for a while.
"This won't go away quickly," he says, and I already know he's right.
On the drive home to Phoenix, my friend and I talk about everything except the execution. The only real discussion we have about it is when I tell him that I felt a desperate urge to do something to save Ceja. I would have felt the same if I'd been in the Leons' house that night nearly 24 years ago. And I'd have been killed, too.
It's two in the morning when I get home.
Two hours ago, Jose Ceja was alive and healthy, stomach full of food, a universe inside his head. And now he's nothing. Randy Leon. Linda Leon. Jose Jesus Ceja.
I wake with a raging fever. I have a debilitating virus, and am bedridden for the next few days. The Arizona Republic publishes a special "tough guy" section, stories detailing how its reporters don't mind watching executions. The least stupid piece is by the reporter who watched Ceja die, Christina Leonard, a kid of 22 who had no clue about what she was seeing, who saw only the cosmetic surface gloss. She saw a man undramatically falling asleep, and seemed to miss his facial convulsion as he suffocated.
The day that article appears, I get a letter from another death-row inmate, who didn't know I was one of Ceja's witnesses.
"Last night they executed Joe Ceja, who has been on the row for 23 years," he writes. "It is just such a cruel scenario, to torture us for so long. And the Clemency Board will NEVER give a recommendation to commute. Nor will the governor commit political suicide by granting a commutation."
Ceja's lawyer releases his client's final statement. It ends with the words, "To the superior court judges, the prosecutors and all of the state and federal appellate court judges who reviewed my case and voted to affirm the sentence, I say that to err is human and to forgive divine! I'll be seeing you all sooner or later!"
Contact Barry Graham at his online address: bgraham@newtimes.com
