The state of South Carolina on Friday strapped down Freddie Owens and injected him with a chemical that’s often used to euthanize pets. Within the days earlier than the execution, a key witness in opposition to him admitted testifying falsely at trial to avoid wasting himself, and mentioned Owens had nothing to do with the 1999 homicide for which he was convicted. However that didn’t matter. Owens, often known as Khalil Divine Black Solar Allah, was put to loss of life.
Officers in Missouri are getting ready to execute Marcellus Williams on Tuesday. The 2 witnesses in opposition to him are recognized liars, and the bloody footprint and hair samples discovered on the scene have been decided to not belong to him or the sufferer within the 2001 deadly stabbing for which he was convicted. DNA samples on the homicide weapon haven’t been analyzed as a result of prosecutors dealt with the knife with out gloves and tainted the proof. A Missouri governor stayed an earlier execution and ordered a board to research the case. However a brand new governor dissolved the board and revoked the keep.
Earlier this month the prosecutor provided to modify the sentence to life in jail if Williams would plead responsible, and the condemned man agreed regardless of insisting he had nothing to do with the crime. A choose accepted the deal, but it surely was thrown out on attraction. So regardless of the shortage of bodily proof linking Williams to the homicide, and over the objection of the prosecutor and the sufferer’s household, the execution is again on.
In Texas they’re on the brink of kill Robert Roberson subsequent month. Roberson was convicted of killing his 2-year-old little one in 2002 primarily based on the controversial “shaken child syndrome” speculation, which has been broadly branded as junk science. Within the days earlier than the kid’s loss of life, she was working a fever, and an emergency room physician prescribed an antihistamine that may trigger deadly respiratory misery in younger youngsters.
When Roberson introduced her again to the ER, regulation enforcement officers didn’t like the best way he was performing — unemotional and indifferent — and concluded it was proof of guilt. It was probably proof of his autism.
The detective who testified in opposition to him now realizes that and is urging clemency in order that Roberson isn’t put to loss of life for against the law that he didn’t commit and that didn’t even happen, as a result of proof suggests the kid died from pneumonia and septic shock.
However Roberson is scheduled to be put to loss of life for shaking her to loss of life anyway.
Dying sentences and executions, even for precise murderers, are relics of primitive societies wherein leaders and their underlings ritually killed to expiate perceived evil, propitiate the gods and calm fears of social chaos.
So what do loss of life sentences develop into when the witnesses, police, prosecutors and judges admit that their former testimony or conclusions have been fallacious and the accused is harmless, and the executions proceed anyway?
They cross the road that separates civilization from savagery, felony justice from black magic, accountability from ritualistic human sacrifice. They develop into false faith, depending on totems akin to “shaken child syndrome,” and shamanistic revelation — for instance, the suspect appeared responsible. They promulgate superstitions, such because the magical pretense that the killing deters future crime. They fulfill our primordial demand for guilt and punishment and our phantasm of ethical cleaning.
What they can not fulfill is the delusion that our society is simply and merciful. The urge for food for blame and blood is voracious and repeatedly beats again our aspiration to be a extra enlightened, humane and fashionable nation. President Biden, quickly to depart workplace, promised as a candidate he would get rid of federal loss of life sentences however has not acted.
Former President Trump, in search of reelection, this week reiterated his long-standing demand to rapidly execute drug sellers.
However even after we kill the responsible, we develop into needlessly merciless. After we kill the conceivably harmless, we develop into a mockery of ourselves and our supposed allegiance to justice.
