“When an execution is scheduled at Central Prison in Raleigh, N.C., a select group of witnesses is invited to attend. In a small room crammed with blue plastic chairs, the families of the victim and of the condemned are seated together, inches apart, watching the culmination of their common story through two layers of glass.
“But this November, one week after the election of a president who has revitalized ‘law and order’ rhetoric and is a death-penalty enthusiast, there was a very different kind of gathering inside that same witnessing room.”