What's Past Is Prologue

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Charles Manson died the other day, and I have struggled with my thoughts about that.

He was, after all, 83. He was in his mid–30s when his "Family" committed the 1969 Tate–LaBianca murders on his behalf, not quite 40 when he was convicted and sentenced to death, only to have his sentence commuted to life in prison when the death penalty was abolished in California.

Clearly he lived a lot longer than he probably expected when his conviction was handed down.

And he was the notorious mastermind of murders that shook the nation then but would hardly merit a passing glance from today's media.

There is no reason to mourn his passing. And yet I am conflicted.

In the past I haven't regretted feeling no sorrow over the deaths of those who were responsible for much suffering and showed no remorse for it. Haven't regretted it at all.

I even sympathized with those who celebrated when Ted Bundy was executed or Jeffrey Dahmer was killed by a fellow inmate or the Night Stalker died of apparently natural causes.

But it's a problem for me. It goes against my upbringing to rejoice when a fellow human being dies. I guess I was able to rationalize it better when I was younger. Not so much now.

I'm sure that when he died, Manson was no better than he was when he terrorized Southern California. Every time that I heard a comment he had made from prison, he seemed just as twisted as ever — and I suppose he will always be a textbook case for the argument that some criminals are completely irredeemable — and thus, there is no real point behind incarcerating them for a lifetime.

Except to preserve a life.

I understand the need some people have for revenge, and I don't want to minimize that. There is something to be said for an eye for an eye. I could even support it if I felt it guaranteed closure for the survivors. But it doesn't — not always, maybe not even a majority of the time.

And as Gandhi said, an eye for an eye only makes the whole world blind.

Crime and Punishment

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"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."

Ernest Hemingway
A Farewell to Arms

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When I graduated from college with a B.A. in journalism, my first job was as a general assignment reporter at a newspaper in central Arkansas. I held that job for nearly two years. During that time, I covered several murder trials.

Consequently, I was familiar with the judicial procedure in the capital murder trial of Curtis Vance, who was convicted recently of last year's murder of Little Rock TV news anchor Anne Pressly.

Every state does things a little differently. When someone is being tried for murder, the procedure in Arkansas is to decide the issue of guilt or innocence and then, if the defendant was convicted, hold a second trial in which the jury decides the punishment.

Informally, it is called the "penalty" or "punishment" phase. And, when the defendant has just been convicted of capital murder, the only options are life in prison — or death.

As a young reporter, I always found the penalty phase to be the most dramatic part of the story of a murder trial because, at that point, the guilt or innocence had been established and the defense attorneys were no longer protesting that their clients were not involved. Well, most of them were not pretending anymore. A few of them did, but most had adapted their strategies to the reality of a conviction.

Their arguments and their witnesses were intended to support what they believed were mitigating circumstances, and I came to regard "mitigating circumstances" as excuses for the crime. Not explanations. How can one explain a premeditated murder?

I remember covering one murder trial in which the defendant, having been convicted, learned (allegedly for the first time) in testimony during the penalty phase that his mother had been mentally retarded. There had been some physical abuse in the family, all of which contributed to his actions as an adult. That was the defense's argument.

The defense attorney must have done a good job of selling that one. Or perhaps it was the moment during the testimony when the defendant spontaneously burst into tears and court had to adjourn for awhile so he could compose himself. Maybe that was when the jurors decided they could not authorize the execution of that defendant.

I guess it's hard for juries to decide questions of life and death — although I suppose I would prefer to leave it up to 12 jurors than a single judge. But jurors must be emotionally vulnerable after a guilt phase that frequently has gruesome physical evidence. Maybe it is all too easy to manipulate jurors after such an experience.

Vance apparently broke into Pressly's home, beat her with a piece of wood, raped her and left her to die in the early morning hours of an October day last year. Her injuries caused a massive stroke, which led to her death a few days later. The photos of the crime scene must have been pretty unsettling.

The defense brought in Vance's mother, who tearfully testified that she struggled with an addiction to crack when Vance was a child and that she was physically abusive. On one occasion, she said, she slammed his head into a brick wall. Doctors testified that they believed he had suffered brain damage.

I don't know if the attorney actually linked the abuse to the possibility of brain damage or if that conclusion was left to the jurors to reach. Whether the attorney connected the dots for the jurors or they did it themselves, it is a logical conclusion, and it is easy to see how it could persuade jurors to give him life.

Pressly's stepfather said he was not disappointed with the jurors' verdict. "There really aren't any winners tonight," he said. To me, that seems to be a very generous attitude, considering the magnitude of the loss his family has experienced.

But it's a tough task for jurors. I know I didn't always agree with the jurors in the trials I covered, but I never criticized their decisions.

We ask 12 citizens to do a dirty job for the rest of us. We must be willing to accept whatever their decision may be.

Death of the D.C. Sniper

It was a matter of minutes ago that it was announced that John Muhammad, the adult half of the D.C. sniper team, has been executed.

Like most people, I remember where I was and what I was doing on September 11. But, unlike most people, I didn't see it as it was happening. I was working in an office, and there was no TV in that office so everyone sat riveted to their radios. I didn't actually see footage of the attacks until the middle of the afternoon. The manager decided to close the office early so I went home and then, about seven hours after the second plane hit the World Trade Center, I first saw footage of that event. And then I saw footage of the WTC collapsing.

That's been the source of a strange dichotomy for me. I feel as if I shared the experience I had on September 11 with the people in that office. But I didn't share the experience of people who saw it all unfold.

Anyway, I feel differently about my experience with the D.C. sniper case. It wasn't a one–day event. Instead it was spread out over several weeks. But I felt more personally involved with it. I saw the reports of the latest shootings. Even though it was all happening in another part of the country, I couldn't help feeling that I could be next. The attacks seemed to be so random, people getting shot while doing ordinary, everyday things like buying gas or mowing the lawn or sitting at a bus stop reading a book.

When I was younger, I was against the death penalty because I felt there was always a possibility that the wrong person could have been convicted. But in the last 15 years or so, DNA evidence has emerged as a convincing element of most death penalty cases, which has eased my concerns.

But, whether you have DNA evidence or not, I've learned something else in my life.

Some people are evil, plain and simple.

John Muhammad was one of those people. And the world is a better place without him.

The Pope Arrives in America

George W. Bush, his wife and one of his daughters greeted Pope Benedict today when the pope arrived at Andrews Air Force Base.

I had expressed the hope yesterday that the pope would take the opportunity of his visit to Washington and New York to speak about violence in our society. As I mentioned, it would be particularly timely to do so, with tomorrow being the one-year anniversary of the massacre at Virginia Tech.

The pope may yet talk about the violence in our society, but, for now, his attention appears to be riveted to pedophile priests and the apparent negative impact they've had on church attendance and contributions to the collection plates.

"It’s difficult for me to understand how it was possible that priests betrayed in this way their mission to give healing, to give the love of God to these children," the pope said.

"It was unclear whether these would be the last words from Benedict on the issue," wrote Ian Fisher and Laurie Goodstein in the New York Times, "which ruptured the faith between parishioners and priests and has cost the church some $2 billion, or whether it was an opening signal of both reconciliation and more to come. Church officials have said they expected the pope to address the scandal more than once during his visit, and there is speculation that he may even meet with some victims."

If the pope is truly concerned about the well-being of the youngest, most vulnerable members of his flock, maybe he should say a few words, while he's here, about a case in Louisiana. The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear arguments tomorrow on whether Louisiana can execute a man who raped his 8-year-old stepdaughter.

I've known some women who were victims of rape. It's a terrible experience they endured, and many of them live with that experience every day. Sometimes rape victims are murdered, but the ones I know weren't murdered. They're still alive, and so is the girl who was raped in the Louisiana case.

I would be completely in favor of a lengthy prison sentence for this man.

But, while I know that sexual assault leaves psychological scars on its victims, especially the young ones, I have to wonder if capital punishment fits the crime.

Is that something the Supreme Court should dictate? Or is it a matter for each state to decide?

What's the answer?

The Case Against Lethal Injection

This week, as the Washington Post points out today, the United States Supreme Court will take up the question of capital punishment.

At issue is not whether capital punishment is constitutional but whether lethal injection violates the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.

In question is Kentucky's use of lethal injection.

"Lethal injection," the Post writes, "was conceived 30 years ago as a more humane alternative to electrocution." But "should states be held to a tougher standard, as Kentucky death row inmates ... urge, and be forced to change or abandon a technique if it carries an 'unnecessary risk of pain and suffering'?"

The Post admits that it has been a long-time opponent of the death penalty. "But if capital punishment is to be carried out, it should be done as humanely as possible by a method that causes no pain. Evidence submitted in the Supreme Court case suggests that the current protocol for administering lethal injection cannot meet this standard."

The Post concludes, "There is a danger that the justices will get so deeply involved in parsing the technical aspects of this case that they become micromanagers of state execution methods. ... They should insist simply that states not rely on a flawed execution method that carries the unnecessary risk of pain when a more humane alternative is available."

The Chicago Sun-Times puts it a little more bluntly: Fix the death penalty, it says, or end it.

The latter may be closer to becoming a reality than you might think, according to the Sun-Times.

"Ultimately," the newspaper says, "reforms might be irrelevant because juries increasingly are rejecting the death penalty."

Here in Texas (which became the first state to use lethal injection in 1982) and in other Southern states, that may not seem to be the case, but in Illinois, the Sun-Times goes on to say,"[j]uries in recent years have approved the death penalty in only one or two cases each year, down from 15 or more in the 1990s. In Illinois, the death penalty is all but dead already."