His last meal was two pepper-jack, barbecue burgers with crisp onions, two baked potatoes with sour cream, bacon and cheese and a strawberry milkshake.

That’s what prison officials told us, the media witnesses selected to monitor the state execution. We didn’t watch the condemned man eat his last meal.

But we did watch him draw his last breath.

Fourteen years ago, I watched a man die.

He had been convicted and sentenced to death 18 years earlier. It was a brutal case. He’d shot his girlfriend three times in the head and face then buried her in a shallow grave in the late 1980s.

He left the state, traveling to Ohio, where he shot a teacher during a bungled robbery. She died of cardiac arrest triggered by the anesthesia used for her gunshot wounds.

He traveled to Texas. His brother convinced him to surrender to authorities.

In February 1990, a South Georgia jury sentenced him to death.

May 2008, the sentence was carried out at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison located on a vast tract of state-owned land, filled with lakes, ponds, wildlife and tall pines. It is a beautiful location situated in Jackson, off Interstate 75, about 45 miles south of Atlanta.

He was the first inmate in the nation executed after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled lethal injection as constitutional. But less than a dozen death penalty opponents showed up outside of the prison to protest.

Execution day is somber inside the prison. Inmates are on lockdown. Correctional officers go about their tasks with silent precision.

The prison is quiet, hushed, like the place is holding its breath.

People often cite biblical references when discussing the death penalty.

Supporters refer to an eye for an eye. Opponents note that Jesus was executed.

Sitting in the witness room 14 years ago, monitoring the preparation, there are a few unexpected things.

He is strapped to a gurney. It is down flat, like a bed. Two extensions stretch from the sides of the gurney. His arms are strapped and the tubes are inserted into his veins for the lethal injection along the extensions.

The extensions do not extend from the gurney like a crucifix but bend down similar to the outer limbs of a peace sign.

Still, the image of the cross flashes through my mind, especially when corrections officials begin to raise the gurney from its flat position. He rises with the gurney. His arms outstretched. His body and limbs held fast with straps.

Surely, they won’t raise the gurney so he is executed in an upright position? They don’t. The gurney is raised at an angle so he can see the witnesses on the other side of the glass and so witnesses can have a better view of him.

He can possibly see the faces of his victim’s family members, the people who arrested and prosecuted him, possibly the media observers.

The faces he most likely recognizes are those of prison personnel. Unlike most of the other witnesses, prison employees do not look at him.

No member of his family attends the execution.

Strapped to the gurney, he can only move his head and his eyes. Uniformed correctional officers, six big men, press against him to administer the straps.

He is in a small room, the chamber, led there by six officers from a connecting door. There is the window to the witness room. A ringed curtain conceals one wall of the chamber. A one-way glass where three officials will each press one of the three chemicals which will put him to sleep, paralyze him then stop his heart.

Uniforms and faces press against him. Tubes are inserted into his veins, the pink faces of nurses at work around him. Straps redden the skin of his biceps darkening the numerous skull tattoos along both of his arms.

A sheet covers him from his feet to mid torso. The sheet will cover his face and head as a death shroud within minutes.

What is he thinking? He gives no last words, other than “nope” when asked if he has a final statement and “no” when asked if he wants a prayer said on his behalf.

His eyes blink then blink more frequently as he is given sodium pentothal, the chemical that puts him to sleep. His eyes grow heavy, the blinking becomes more pronounced then his eyes shut.

They do not open again.

It is no easy thing to watch a man put to death, even if he did do terrible things, even if it looks like he’s only fallen asleep.

One prison official that day said many people executed on death row are not the same people who committed the crime.

In some cases, within a matter of weeks or months, on death row, the inmate’s life changes, especially if he had a speedy trial.

In some cases, death row means the first time in years or decades that the inmate doesn’t have drugs or alcohol fueling his blood. Change comes quickly for these inmates.

With years on death row, some times as long as 20 or 30 years, an inmate isn’t necessarily the same man who committed the crime decades earlier, the prison official said, but he must still face the consequences of his actions.

The prison official talking 14 years ago said he had witnessed numerous executions by lethal injection and by electric chair.

As a younger officer, he was an ardent supporter of execution. Years later, he neither personally supported nor opposed the death penalty.

He had come to view executions as the law of the land to be handled with the utmost professionalism. If the job is done correctly, he had no problem with the death penalty.

If the law were to change, and the death penalty were no more, well, he said, he’d have no problem with that either.

Dean Poling is an editor with The Valdosta Daily Times and editor of The Tifton Gazette.