Mike Gratchick is a former reporter for the Associated Press who covered the McKay

effort kidnapping Hilton Crawford's trial and Hilton's execution and as a

reporter who spent 40 years based out of Huntsville, the city that houses Texas's death row and execution chamber, he has another distinction.

He's witnessed more executions than anyone else in the country.

I've watched probably 450 as we sit here.

And you said that Texas had done one before you started reporting here.

So what happened there?

Are they stopped for a while?

Or?

The Supreme Court in the mid-60s put a moratorium

on capital punishment in the whole country.

And that moratorium lasted for about a decade until the mid-70s when they decided that

Cabal punishment could resume.

And then Texas carried out the first one in 82.

That was the very first lethal injection also in the country and since

then Texas is certainly getting the notoriety is the most active state for capital

punishment.

And were you saying you kind of had an interest in this the most active state for capital punishment. Yeah.

And were you saying you kind of had an interest in this topic even before you started covering it?

No.

I came from Michigan, which never had the death penalty.

There has never been an execution carried out by the state of Michigan, never.

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