Argus Leader reporter Danielle Ferguson was one of the media witnesses for Rodney Berget's execution Monday at the South Dakota State Penitentiary. These are her impressions following that assignment:
One of the more revealing moments was when we were stopped between the very gates Rodney Berget almost escaped from after he and Eric Robert killed correctional officer Ronald Johnson seven years ago.
It was shortly after 7 p.m., six hours after Berget was originally scheduled to be put to death, and the collection of witnesses – media, Johnson's family members, law enforcement representatives – was finally being moved to the execution viewing area.
My group made it through one gate and stopped, waiting for the second gate to open, when one of the retired Department of Corrections officers who was with our group said, “This is where they almost escaped.”
It was then that the gravity of the situation hit me.
I had gone through the day trying to remain professional, polite and somewhat stoic. I was focusing on my role as a media witness to the execution and preparing myself for taking accurate notes of what occurred in the chamber.
My nerves had calmed a bit throughout the six-hour wait as the United States Supreme Court heard a motion to stay the execution from attorney Juliet Yackel, who firmly believed Rodney Berget had an intellectual disability.
A circuit court judge ruled earlier this year that Berget was not mentally impaired, addressing an issue that delayed the execution for years. The Supreme Court motion was ultimately denied, paving the way for the state of South Dakota to put a prisoner to death for the 19th time in its history.
I’m not here to tell you about my individual thoughts on the death penalty or the justice system. My objective is to share my experience of what happened to give you a look into the process. Journalists as "pool reporters" have a unique responsibility in executions. We must serve as witnesses for the public and rest of the media.
I was aware of my role and prepared to carry it out. I asked a few other reporters who had covered an execution about their experiences, and they all said about the same thing: It's a clinical process and, if all goes as planned, a fairly calm and quick one.
A group of five of us from the Argus Leader went to the Ronald “R.J.” Johnson Training Academy at the penitentiary at about 10 a.m. Monday, three and a half hours before Berget was scheduled to be executed.
Media witnesses – Don Jorgensen from KELO-TV, Dave Kolpack from The Associated Press and myself – were brought into an old training room around 12:30 p.m. with three other witnesses, retired Department of Corrections employees.
The six of us waited in the room, which had a view of what used to be the former warden’s home and the parking lot in front of the prison lobby, with our escort from the DOC. We were to wait there until an officer retrieved us to bring us to the execution room.
Our wait grew longer as we waited for a decision from the U.S. Supreme Court.
We weren’t allowed to have our phones, so we weren’t in the know about updates in the case. We were at the mercy of the occasional update from our escort, who tried his best to get us what information he could.
While we waited, we got to know each other. The other media witnesses and I learned more about the penitentiary and heard some interesting stories from the retired DOC employees also serving as witnesses to the execution.
During this time I wondered how the Johnson family was doing during what must have been a painful stalemate of waiting. They'd waited seven years for this, their personal tragedy aired to the public for nearly a decade, and when at last a somewhat final moment of closure was within reach, they had to wait yet again.
I had spoken with Lynette Johnson, R.J.’s wife, just days before, and I thought of her family’s agonizing road to recovery. It was sobering.
I thought about Berget. Had he been strapped to the table? If he had, at what point did DOC staff say he could get up? Was he to be served another last meal? These details may seem small in comparison to the grand scheme of the day, but I wondered.
When 3:30 p.m. rolled around and we still hadn’t heard word on a ruling, pizza was ordered for the witnesses. We ended up getting a break shortly after 4 p.m. The Supreme Court had ultimately denied that motion, and the execution was set to move forward.
We shuffled back into the oddly familiar training room around 5:30 p.m. It wasn’t until about 7 p.m. that a correctional officer knocked on our door and asked, “Are you ready?”
We walked down narrow stairs and out of the lobby and filed into a red van. After the retired DOC officer noted that we were between the gates Robert and Berget almost escaped from, he pointed out a mesh that was added to the bars of the gate that Robert started to climb in a last-ditch effort to escape. The material was added after the escape attempt.
We got out of the red van and went into the building with the execution room, which sits directly across from Pheasantland Industries building, where Johnson was killed.
Seeing those landmark tethers to what happened that April 2011 morning put a knot in my chest. I was nervous for what we were about to see, but then I thought of the Johnson family and couldn’t imagine what they must have been feeling. I couldn’t imagine being a correctional officer having to go to work every day knowing what happened to one of their own inside these walls.
We walked through a metal detector, down a hallway and into another room. We had to wait another 10 or so minutes until we could walk to our viewing room. We were the last group to be moved and had to wait until the others were situated in their rooms.
We walked through a dimly lit hallway and up narrow stairs into exam room No. 1.
We fumbled around in the dark a bit. The blinds to the execution room were closed, and we couldn’t turn on a light. We grabbed the legal pads and pens provided to us, adjusted our chairs around the 3-by-3-foot window and waited for the curtain draw.
My heart started racing a bit again when I heard the warden over the intercom say to lift the curtains.
And there was Berget, on a table. Covered in white sheets, his wrists tied with tan leather straps, staring at the ceiling. He seemed calm.
The warden said there were no pending appeals and that they were ready to move forward with the sentence from the court.
Warden Darin Young moved the microphone over toward Berget and motioned for him to say any words he wanted to.
“Sorry for the delay,” Berget said. “Got caught in traffic.”
He paused, took a few breaths, and continued.
“In all seriousness, (I wanted to) thank everybody that was there for me.”
He paused again to note how shaky his voice was. He got somewhat emotional, pausing to take a few deep breaths, and he finished his statement.
“I love you, and I’ll meet you out there,” he said after naming a few people individually, telling them he loved them. He seemed to be holding a peace sign with his left hand.
What we didn’t know at the time of the execution was that the drugs had started flowing as he was talking. Shortly after his statement, Berget seemed to groan in reaction to the drugs, took a few gasping breaths and snorted about two times.
Then, silence.
It seemed as if he fell asleep.
I thought of how Lynette described Eric Robert’s execution, which she and her family also witnessed. Peaceful and dignified, she said.
The coroner was brought in and stated the time of death was 7:37 p.m.
The curtains were drawn, and we walked out of our viewing room, signed the execution witness document and were escorted back to the training academy, where we were to be available for questions from our fellow media members.
We watched as Johnson’s daughter, Toni Schafer, and Lynette gave emotional statements about the father, husband and grandfather that was lost. Lynette pleaded with those watching or reading about the news to be mindful of the fact their grandchildren are older and have social media.
Please, leave them out of this, she said. It put a lump in my throat, as that was something she said she was most worried about when we spoke last week.
I was in awe of the bravery of the Johnson family, to get up in front of a dozen members of the media and provide such composed statements after such an emotional moment.
Their road to recovery is not over. Though it seemed they may feel a bit safer knowing the second of two men who killed their loved one is no longer here, I know their grief will linger.
Berget's execution is something I will never forget.
But I know the impact of yesterday will hit harder and longer for those who knew and loved Ron Johnson.
Source: Sioux Falls Argus Leader, Danielle Ferguson, October 30, 2018
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
