- A reporter said Alabama corrections staff told her on Thursday she couldn't witness an execution.
- Ivana Shatara said staff told her that her skirt was too short and she was wearing open-toed shoes.
A local reporter on Thursday said Alabama's Department of Corrections staffers told her she couldn't witness an execution because of the clothes she was wearing.
Ivana Shatara, a producer at AL.com, shared in a now-viral tweet that a representative publicly told her she couldn't view the execution of a 50-year-old man because her skirt was "too short" and her open-toe heels were "too revealing."
Shatara said her skirt was "more than appropriate," and that she has worn it at previous executions and at numerous professional events. After trying to make it longer, she said, a photographer offered her fishing pants — which the Department of Corrections allowed.
"I put on the man's pants and attached the suspenders underneath my shirt to stay up," she wrote, adding that she changed into a pair of tennis shoes that were in her car.
"This was an uncomfortable situation, and I felt embarrassed to have my body and my clothes questioned in front of a room of people I mostly had never met," she wrote. "I sat down, tried to stop blushing, and did my work. As women often have to do."
The Department of Corrections did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment. A representative for AL.com also did not immediately return Insider's request for comment.
After a lengthy delay from the scheduled execution time, Joe Nathan James Jr. was executed by lethal injection for killing his ex-girlfriend decades ago.