Last Thursday, 49-year-old Joe Nathan James was executed in the US state of Alabama. Two reporters want to report on it. But before that, the prison staff considers it necessary to examine their clothing carefully.
A jailer has denied a journalist access to an Alabama execution because she said her skirt was too short. Reporter Ivana Hrynkiv describes Thursday’s incident on Twitter that she has worn this skirt to executions several times and has never had any problems with it. Such an incident had never occurred at other professional appointments and events either. “The skirt is more than appropriate.”
However, the journalist from the local news site AL.com was only given access to the execution after a “nice photographer” from a TV station lent her a pair of fishing trousers. “Waterproof waders with suspenders were found appropriate,” writes Hrynkiv. The last obstacle: Her shoes, in which her toes could be seen and which the guard also found too revealing. “Fortunately, I had a pair of tennis shoes in my car,” reports the journalist. “I was finally allowed to do my job in an unknown man’s fishing pants and sports shoes.”
As the British “Guardian” reports, Hrynkiv was not the only journalist who had problems with guards during the execution. Accordingly, the reporter Kim Chandler was also measured by the AP news agency to see whether her clothes were long enough. Chandler tweeted that in 20 years of reporting executions, nothing like this had ever happened to her.
49-year-old Joe Nathan James, who murdered his ex-girlfriend in 1994, was executed last week. According to the information, the responsible staff needed three hours before they found a suitable vein for the lethal injection. “A completely normal process,” the “Guardian” quoted a prison official as saying.
(This article was first published on Monday 01 August 2022.)
