SAN QUENTIN, Calif. -- The moon, a bit more than half full, glowed in a sky of stars and darkness. Only a faint breeze was blowing across the San Francisco Bay. A few yards from the dark water's edge, vans from local TV stations lined the road ending at prison gates. The state was ready to kill.
The premeditated murder went smoothly. Six minutes after midnight, a lethal injection began. Eleven minutes into the morning, observers reported, Darrell Rich's face changed color. The official time of death was 12:13 a.m., March 15, 2000.
The Associated Press quickly sent out a 270-word report that began: "A serial killer who threw an 11-year-old girl more than 100 feet to her death was executed by injection early Wednesday..." The dispatch did not mention that several hundred people had gathered at the gate to protest the death
penalty.
By now, when the government takes a human life, it's usually not much of a national story -- maybe a few inches in the newspaper or a fleeting mention on a newscast. With 3,625 people on death row in the United States, and more arriving all the time, a macabre rhythm has taken hold.