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 towards 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 demise.
Officers in Missouri are getting ready to execute Marcellus Williams on Tuesday. The 2 witnesses towards him are identified liars, and the bloody footprint and hair samples discovered on the scene had 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 supplied 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, however it was thrown out on attraction. So regardless of the dearth 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 point of kill Robert Roberson subsequent month. Roberson was convicted of killing his 2-year-old little one in 2002 based mostly on the controversial “shaken child syndrome” speculation, which has been extensively branded as junk science. Within the days earlier than the kid’s demise, she was operating 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, legislation enforcement officers didn’t like the way in which he was performing — unemotional and indifferent — and concluded it was proof of guilt. It was probably evidence of his autism.
The detective who testified towards him now realizes that and is urging clemency in order that Roberson shouldn’t be put to demise for a criminal offense 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 demise for shaking her to demise anyway.
Loss of life sentences and executions, even for precise murderers, are relics of primitive societies during which leaders and their underlings ritually killed to expiate perceived evil, propitiate the gods and calm fears of social chaos.
So what do demise sentences change into when the witnesses, police, prosecutors and judges admit that their former testimony or conclusions had been mistaken and the accused is harmless, and the executions proceed anyway?
They cross the road that separates civilization from savagery, legal justice from black magic, accountability from ritualistic human sacrifice. They change into false faith, depending on totems equivalent 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’t 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 do away with federal death sentences however has not acted.
Former President Trump, looking for reelection, this week reiterated his long-standing demand to shortly execute drug sellers.
However even once we kill the responsible, we change into needlessly merciless. After we kill the conceivably harmless, we change into a mockery of ourselves and our supposed allegiance to justice.
