Cameron Todd Willingham

I've written a couple of posts here in the past dealing with the death penalty and the stories of a couple of convicted murderers and their eventual executions.

I'm against the death penalty for a number of reasons. You can read the older posts to get the general drift of my objections because, frankly, I don't have the stomach to go over it all again right now.

I'm only bringing it up now because earlier today I read a very well-written article in The New Yorker, Cameron Todd Willingham, Texas, and the death penalty. I urge everyone to give this story their very serious consideration (it's a bit long, so set aside some time).

Cameron Todd Willingham was convicted of intentionally setting fire to his house and murdering his three children as they slept. He was sentenced to death and executed. He was innocent.

Reporter David Grann does a very good job on this story. It's had me depressed most of the day. Again, I urge all serious people to give it a read.

[Added: Glenn (in comments) has directed me to this Slate article dealing with innocent death-row victims and the apparent indifference of the U.S. constitution. Chilling.]

Dale Leo Bishop

I'm not an activist, or anything, and I think I've only written one post here (oh, and a brief follow-up) on the topic, but...

Capital punishment is fucked. I mean, I think it's so fucked that it really bugs me that I have to argue the point: if it's wrong to kill someone in cold blood, then the death penalty is fucking murder (and never mind the fact that killing murderers is nothing more than sheer laziness in whatever society still happens to practice this particular form of barbarism). And what really sticks in my craw is how many death penalty proponents claim (falsely, so it seems) to be Christians. I hate to tell you this, assholes, but you cannot be both a Christian and support the death penalty. I guess you'll all be seein' my atheist ass in hell (assuming you all believe a single fucking word of the shit you spew, that is).

So why am I on about this tonight? Why am I interrupting an otherwise enjoyable evening of getting drunk, listening to tunes, and generally annoying my friends on the web? This is why:

Next week, the State of Mississippi is going to strap Dale Leo Bishop to a prison gurney and shoot him full of deadly chemicals. He's going to die for murder although he killed no one. He's going to die even though his case was grossly mishandled by a lawyer who refused to present mitigating evidence of the horrible abuse Bishop suffered as a child and his life-long struggle with mental illness. He's going to die even though the man whom prosecutors admit is the one who committed the murder has been spared, while Bishop has been condemned to execution by lethal injection.

Please, read the whole story. There's a link at the end where you can write the Governor of Mississippi (at this point Bishop's only hope). If I can do it from here in Japan (and I did), you can do it too, wherever you are.

No Laughing Matter

A few weeks ago I posted this story about Patrick Knight, a death row inmate in Texas. Knight was collecting jokes with the purpose of selecting the best one to be his final statement before being executed.

Patrick Knight was executed this past Tuesday (June 26). The following is from this AP story:

Condemned prisoner Patrick Knight was executed Tuesday evening for the deaths of an Amarillo-area couple without delivering on a promise to tell a joke in his final statement.

Patrick Knight has been soliciting jokes in the mail and on a Web site, sometimes receiving as many as 20 a day, saying his humor was intended to raise the spirits of other inmates. He said he received as many as 1,300 proposals.

But when the moment came, Knight thanked God for his friends and asked for help for innocent men on death row. He named several he said were innocent. His voice shaking and nearly in tears, he said, "Not all of us are innocent, but those are."

After expressing love to some friends, he said, "I said I was going to tell a joke. Death has set me free. That's the biggest joke. I deserve this."

"And the other joke is that I am not Patrick Bryan Knight and y'all can't stop this execution now. Go ahead, I'm finished."

Nine minutes later at 6:21 p.m. CDT, he was pronounced dead.

Prison spokeswoman Michelle Lyons disputed Knight's mistaken identity claim.

"We fingerprint them when they come over," she said.

Randall County Sheriff Joel Richardson, who watched Knight die, said the joke plan seemed to be a ploy by Knight to draw attention to himself.

"Despite all the hype about his joke, it turns out he's not much of a comedian," he said. "He's simply an executed cold-blooded killer."

I wasn't going to write anything by way of comment on this, but...

"[...] I am not Patrick Bryan Knight and y'all can't stop this execution now. Go ahead, I'm finished." It seems quite possible to me that this is more than just a simple "mistaken identity claim". Patrick Knight had been on death row for 16 years. Who among us could honestly say "I'm the same person I was 16 years ago"? Was the person executed this past Tuesday in fact a "cold-blooded killer"? The only one who knows the answer to that question is Patrick Knight. It's too late to ask him now.

Killing in the Name of...

But what then is capital punishment but the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated it may be, can be compared? For there to be equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life.

Albert Camus, "Reflections on the Guillotine"

I came across this interesting story the other day, about Patrick Knight, an inmate in Texas who's scheduled to be executed on June 26. On August 26, 1991, Knight broke into the home of Walter and Mary Ann Werner, held them captive, and the next day drove them to another location where he shot them, execution-style, and then left their bodies in a ditch. By all accounts, Patrick Knight was (16 years ago, at least) a pretty bad character, but it's not the history of this case that makes Knight interesting...

[...] Knight is accepting jokes mailed to him on Texas' death row or e-mailed to a friend who has a Web site for him. The friend then mails him the jokes.
Knight said the joke he finds the funniest will be his final statement the evening of June 26.

As you can probably imagine, there are many people who are not amused by this.

Randall County Sheriff Joel Richardson thinks the whole idea is anything but cool. As chief deputy at the time of the Werners' killings, Richardson investigated the case and intends to witness Knight's execution. He said the Werners' family has already been through enough, and that Knight's attempt to make a joke at the execution is sick.
"The whole thing is not a joke to anybody here unless it is to him," Richardson said of Knight. "This tells you a little bit about the guy's character, anyway."

Knight himself has the following to say:

"I'm not trying to disrespect the Werners or anything like that," he told The Associated Press from death row. "I'm not trying to say I don't care what's going on. I'm about to die. I'm not going to sit here and whine and cry and moan and everything like that when I'm facing the punishment I've been given.
[...]
"I know I'm not innocent," said Knight, who believes his appeals have been exhausted. "They think they're killing me. They think they're punishing me. They've already punished me. I've already had 16 years of punishment. They're releasing me. They're letting me go. That's helping me out. That's the way I look at it."

So, there we have the basic facts, and I suppose one's reaction to them depends, more or less, on one's view of capital punishment.

Personally, I don't think there's anything especially "sick" about Knight's wish to crack a joke just before he's put to death. It's not even strange as far as I'm concerned. Some might think it undignified, I suppose, but really, what can anybody really say is "proper" behavior for a man about to be put to death? I'll tell you what I think. I think the only natural thing to do at the moment of one's murder (for this is what it surely is) is whatever it takes to avoid it. If there's no way to avoid it, well then, what fucking difference does it make what one does?

Having gone through the appeals process we can probably assume that Knight has, on countless occasions, said that he's sorry for what he's done. It's beyond me how expressing it one last time makes his death more dignified, let alone making him a better, or even reformed man. (And if anyone accepts even for a moment that this kind of last-minute expression of sorrow shows that he's been reformed, well then, what the fuck are you killing him for?) Make no mistake about it, what the state of Texas is going to do to Patrick Knight is no less "criminal" than what Knight did to his victims, the Werners.

No, I haven't forgotten about Walter and Mary Ann Werner, and I haven't forgotten that they were murdered (apparently) in cold blood by Patrick Knight. I fail to see, however, how murdering Knight, and calling it "justice", serves the Werners and their family or serves the larger society. Frankly, I'd worry about anyone who took comfort in the death of another person (I don't care who it might be or what he might have done).

Capital punishment is not a rational response to murder, and it places the condemned person into the unnatural position of consenting to be killed. This seems a bit "cruel and unusual" to me. Why don't we just call it what it is--state-sanctioned revenge, and drop all this high talk of "justice"? Patrick Knight may well be a worthless piece of shit, I really couldn't say. But if he wants to crack a joke as he's about to be executed, or dance a jig, or recite the Lord's Prayer, or cry and beg for forgiveness, or fight tooth and nail trying to escape, what's the fucking difference?