There is a precision to the execution process that is both comforting and unsettling.

When Jose High was executed on Nov. 6, 2001, at the age of 43, every minute of his final days was strictly scripted and recorded. Everyone was tested on his or her roles and the rules to be followed, including witnesses from the media.

I was among them.

After arriving at the prison that afternoon, each of us received a set of instructions. There would be no interviews with any of the guards or other witnesses. There was to be no communication, no talking at all once inside the chamber.

Mr. High had been separated from the other death row inmates 48 hours earlier. At 9 a.m. he was allowed visitors. At 3 p.m. he received a physical and a new set of clothes. He then received his last meal and was allowed to make a final, recorded statement.

At 6:40 p.m. he was strapped to a gurney. Elsewhere inside the prison, the witnesses were herded into small vans, the media witnesses separated from the others -- the prosecutor, law enforcement, the attorney general and prison officials. The family members of the victims Mr. High had killed were at the prison but they weren't allowed to witness the execution. The vans headed to the small building where Mr. High would be put to death.

And that's when the carefully scripted event went off the page for 15 minutes. The prison staff couldn't get an IV line properly inserted. A doctor had to cut into Mr. High to insert the IV, and an EKG was connected so the doctor could monitor his heart rate.

Eventually the witnesses were led into a small, windowless room. There were several rows of benches.

In front, behind glass, we watched Mr. High die. It took nine minutes. Through most of it, Mr. High was unconscious. The first drug pushed through the IV sedated him, a second drug paralyzed his muscles and a third stopped his heart. When the EKG monitor revealed a flat line, a doctor pronounced death.

The witnesses were led out of the small building to the waiting vans, which took them back to the main prison. The prison spokesman read Mr. High's final statement.

Mr. High was sentenced to death for the July 26, 1976, murder of 11-year-old Bonnie Bulloch in Taliaferro County. Mr. High and two others kidnapped the boy and his stepfather after a robbery. They tried to kill stepfather, Henry Phillips, too, but he survived and helped law enforcement identify the killers.

Mr. High, Judson Ruffin, Nathan Brown and Alphonzo Morgan would be connected to the Aug. 20, 1976, rape, kidnapping and murders of Willean Hall, 36, and Leroy Linwood, 30, and the Aug. 22, 1976, murder of John C. Gray, 55. They were later caught after kidnapping a young couple. The young man was able to get away and go for help. His 16-year-old girlfriend was raped before she could be rescued.

The other killers are serving life in prison. Mr. High was the only one whose death sentence was not reversed on appeal.

Reach Sandy Hodson at (706) 823-3226 or sandy.hodson@augustachronicle.com.