John Allen Muhammad executed
From CNN:
Muhammad's attorney had argued his client was not given sufficient time to file his final appeal, but said Tuesday -- after the high court and the governor declined his request for a stay -- that he would make no further efforts to delay the matter."We respect their decisions and will make no more legal efforts to stop this process from going forward," said lawyer Jon Sheldon in a written statement. "In its effort to race John Allen Muhammad to his death before his appeals could be pursued, the state of Virginia will execute a severely mentally ill man who also suffered from Gulf War Syndrome the day before Veterans Day."
No apologies for what this man did and every sympathy for the families of his victims, only questions if anyone is listening: Is state-sanctioned murder any less of a sin than murder in a back alley? What circumstances made this man do what he did?
Some of us turn our heads, some tacitly allow the death penalty because we trust others to make these weighty decisions for us, some clamor for more executions with a thinly veiled thirst for blood and murder.
Is the continued viability of the death penalty in our country the result of a variation of the psychological phenomena of diffusion of responsibility? If one conscientious person is handed a pistol and told, "we as a society believes this person deserves to die - kill him for us," what are the odds that the one person would take aim and kill? What if 20 people were to share the guilt for taking the bad actor's life? 307 million?
What bothers me the most about the death penalty in our country is the hypocrisy of it. For example, the attempts to make it appear as a clinical and clean procedure and to create the appearance that there is no pain. Or the notion that it will have a deterrent effect - many of the people that are executed are of limited capacity, mentally ill, or addicted to drugs. Will killing these people deter the next mentally ill, mentally retarded, or drug-crazed person from murder?
If we are going to have a death penalty, we should do away with the pretenses. Once a person has been sentenced to death, they should be taken to a public place and their head should be blown off at point blank range with a shotgun. It would be quick and painless. It should be televised.
