Monthly Archives: January 2020

This past June the state of Georgia executed Marion “Murdock” Wilson, Jr. He became the 1500^th person put to death in the United States since Gary Gilmore’s January 17, 1977 execution—an execution he requested—that effectively reinstated the death penalty following a ten-year moratorium on executions throughout the nation.

America has always had a special, although somewhat peculiar, affection for the death penalty.

Between the nation’s Declaration of Independence in 1776 and over the next 23 years through 1799, some 618 persons were executed in this country. The death penalty affection intensified in the 1800s as the nation executed 5,381 persons, a significant proportional increase from the previous two-plus decades. By the 1900s America was in a full-blown love affair with the death penalty, marching 7,980 persons into death houses between 1900 and 1967.

The last person put to death in this country before the so-called “Furman Moratorium” was Louis Jose Monge who was put to death in Colorado’s gas chamber on June 2, 1967.

The decade between Monge’s execution and Gilmore’s execution was the only decade in American history when the nation did not execute someone.

Altogether, since 1776 to the present day, America has executed roughly 15,439 people.

Those executions include 365 women, 575 teenagers (13-19), and three 12-year-olds. The youngest person executed in modern times was George Junius Stinney, Jr., a 14-year-old African-American youth who was convicted and executed in South Carolina’s electric chair by white men—the police who arrested him, the prosecutor who prosecuted him, the jury that rendered the verdict against him, the judge who preside over his trial, and all the men who participated in strapping him into the electric chair.

With the exception of the 1500 persons executed since 1977, the overwhelming majority of all death penalty convictions since the nation’s founding were rendered by all-white, male juries.

Although the Supreme Court extended the right to serve on juries to African Americans in 1880, the right was a hollow as white prosecutors in all states created statutory and procedural mechanisms to keep African-Americans off juries in criminal cases.

And while the first female jury was seated in Los Angeles in 1911, women did not gain the legal right to jury duty until 1975 through a Supreme Court decision.

Thus, in a nutshell, the American love affair with the death penalty is rooted in the white man’s desire, and need, to kill. White men killed Native Americans in order to steal their Eastern land; enslaved and killed Africans to work their Southern land; killed Chinese to make them build railroads to travel across their Western land; and robbed and killed Mexicans to gain more Southwestern land for America.

White men have pretty much killed anyone or anything that stood in their way of obtaining whatever they wanted, regardless of the human suffering and costs it inflicted upon non-whites.

That’s why white men have always held that peculiar affection for the death penalty.

Before the death penalty was reinstated in 1977, some 57 percent of all the people executed in this country were non-whites—African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and Native-Americans—who have always represented a narrow minority of the American population.

White men in America—those in the halls of legislatures and those sitting on court benches—have historically justified their love for state-sponsored killing on three fundamental premises: One, the death penalty deterred killings and other violent crimes; two, the killing of an offender exacted a just punishment for their offense; and, third, the Old Testament, God’s law book, repeatedly blessed the death penalty “in the name of God.”

Whether any of these premises are effective is the subject of continuing debate—one that has roiled the soul of the nation since roughly 1907 when the first states began to outlaw the death penalty.

Ruben Gutierrez is scheduled to die on July 31, 2019 in the Texas death chamber at Huntsville. He will be the 11^th person executed in 2019.

Besides Gutierrez, there are at this time 23 more persons scheduled to be executed in 2019 in this country.

The heartbeat of injustice goes on.

Therein lay the moral dilemma associated with the death penalty.

States with the death penalty believe in the ancient religious adage “an eye for an eye, a life for a life.”

God is the creator of that vengeance.

Jesus, on the other hand, instructs us to “turn the other cheek;” to have compassion for humanity, no matter how horrific the individual sin.

This past week the State of Texas executed 48-year-old Larry Swearingen for the 1998 murder of 19-year-old Melissa Trotter, most probably in a forest located 70 miles north of Houston.

In a statement released through the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Melissa’s family, who attended and witnessed Swearingen’s execution, stated: “Today, justice was served. The process has been overwhelming. We want to praise God for getting us through this horrific ordeal. We feel we can now move forward and start the healing process.”

God would agree, welcoming the praise given to him by the Trotter family. The Almighty’s demand for a “life for a life” vengeance had been fulfilled with Swearingen’s execution.

But Jesus, sitting at God’s right hand, was saddened by the brutal ritual of another state-sanctioned killing. He wept at its callousness, its inhumanity.

“Father,” Jesus said turning his worn, weary eyes up at his Creator, “why did you send me to live among your children, to teach them about the power of love, forgiveness, and compassion you cannot even give them?”

“Son,” God replied, sternly looking down at his own blood creation, “I commanded to all my creations through my divined prophet Moses that ‘thou shall not kill.’ Vengeance must be had for anyone of my creation who violates that sacred commandment.”

“By killing the killer, Father?” Jesus asks.

“A life for a life is the only just vengeance,” God replied, almost patronizingly.

“I love you, Father – I truly do,” Jesus said, a tear of sorrow coursing its way down a hallow cheek. “But I cannot obey your command for vengeance. I promised your children, and I was crucified on a cross for delivering that promise, that our flock should love each other; that we should respect all life, regardless of its sin. You created Larry Swearingen, Father – you are responsible for him being on the face of the very Earth you created.”

“You are right, my Son,” God replied. “But with his creation I bestowed upon him a free will to decide right from wrong. He chose wrong when he took another’s life. My vengeance demanded his life being taken in response for that wrong.”

“But where is his place in our Kingdom, Father?” Jesus asked. “You sent me to Earth to deliver your promise: if any soul repents the moment before death for their sin, they will be forgiven and rewarded with a place in our Kingdom? Do wrong, repent, and glory be to God! Is that what we are all about, Father?”

“Listen to me, Son,” God commanded. “I created Lucifer, the most angelic of all my angels. I made him good but gave him the free will to choose between right and wrong. He chose wrong, and I threw him out of our Kingdom and cast him into eternal hell.”

Jesus paused, staring unwavering into the angry eyes of God before answering.

“There is no forgiveness, Father. All wrongdoers, no matter how minor the wrong, must suffer the fate of Lucifer. You have made a Creation for which there is no forgiveness, no salvation from sin. Now I understand why you, and I, and the few angels you have chosen, are the only ones in our Kingdom.”

“Do not question my power ….”

“I am a lie, Father,” Jesus said, interrupting his Father. “I promised every human being a place in our Kingdom. I told them that you so loved the world, you gave your only begotten son for those who believe in you that they would not perish but would have everlasting life. That is a lie, Father – your commands for vengeance foreclose all hope for everlasting life—and that is why we are here, alone together in a Kingdom of false promise.”

Silence separated Father from Son.

“Don’t you understand, Father – that to forgive humankind, you must first forgive yourself for creating a life for them poisoned by the temptation of Evil. Father, why would you even do such a thing?”

An act of grace and tolerance seldom seen in an American courtroom.

American courtrooms are generally viewed as places of accountability but more often than not are places of vengeance, misconduct, and sometimes even bald-faced injustice.

But this week a courtroom in Dallas, Texas witnessed the brother of a murder victim give the former police officer charged with the murder a hug of forgiveness.

That hug is probably why the jury sentenced Amber Guyger to ten years rather than the harsher minimum of 28 years demanded by the prosecution.

It is easier to forget than forgive. People find all sorts of ways to bury in the recesses of their mind the very worst things done to them by other people.

But wounded people find it difficult, if not impossible, to forgive, to contain the bile of hatred that demands revenge.

When Brandt Jean asked Judge Tammy Kemp from the witness stand if he could give Amber Guyger a hug, he did so against the primal instinct to demand revenge instead.

It was an act of remarkable courage by Brandt Jean—a gesture badly needed at a time when Americans are polarized with racial division and even racial hatred among the ranks of too many people who have bought into the “white nationalism” social philosophy.

Some people are upset about the lenient 10-year sentence Guyger received.

Judges and jurors across the country are asked each day to consider the feelings of the victims of crime, especially violent crime.

That’s precisely what the Dallas jury did in the Amber Guyger case—and it did so without revenge in mind.

Revenge for the sake of revenge never produces justice.

The killing of Botham Jean in his own apartment last year was a tragedy. His death demanded accountability. Amber Guyger’s jury provided some accountability with its murder conviction and sentence.

Was it enough accountability?

Each person will have to decide that based on their own life experiences.

I will not second-guess the jury’s sentencing decision.

Ten years may seem a lenient sentence (and it is), but it is a long time for an ex-police officer, especially a female, to spend in an intolerant and unforgiving prison society. The very insidious nature of the prison experience will cause Guyger to endure more consequences than the average inmate.

That was the name of the penal health care provider before it changed its name to Wellpath.

According to a recent CNN investigative report by Blake Ellis and Melanie Hicken, the medical delivery service, now owned by a multi-billion dollae investment firm, has government contracts to provide healthcare services to inmates in roughly 500 penal facilities across 34 states.

Outsourced medical services to penal facilities are much like private, for-profit prisons: corrupt, negligent, incompetent, and worst of all, totally unconcerned about the lives and general well-being of the inmates they are charged with caring for.

The American prison population is aging, creating a demand for more sophisticated health care services that for-profit companies are not willing to provide under any circumstances.

For-profit penal health care providers, especially those facilities operated by for-profit corporations, do not view inmates as human beings, rather as defective, sub-human specimens state and federal governments have delivered to them to cage and control.

The level of corruption and violence in for-profit prisons is staggering when compared to government run penal facilities. And the level of incompetence, indifference, and malpractice with for-profit medical delivery systems in penal facilities is just as overwhelming.

Profit does not care one plug nickel about humanity, especially a humanity disowned by organized society. Profit serves one purpose: more profit fueled by the demands of greed. People who worship at the altar of profit are basically worthless motherfuckers incapable of caring about humanity.

That’s why the for-profit prisons and for-profit penal healthcare providers hire the dregs in their respective professions. Most guards in for-profit prisons and penal health care providers, whether nurses or doctors, cannot find gainful employment in government run facilities or in the general community.

There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of lawsuits pending in state and federal courts against these for-profit companies because of abuses and neglect of the inmates they are paid to care for.

Virtually all of the inmate lawsuits and administrative grievances will go unheard by the courts and penal administrators, just as the screams for help by inmates in cellblocks suffering from midnight guard beatings or chronic medical conditions will go unheard.

“They are killing me in here” will find no sympathetic ear, either in prison or outside of prison.

Fyodor Dostoevsky once wrote that, “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.”

NBC News anchor Lester Holt recently spent three days in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, known as Angola. He found the prison to be clean and as peaceful as one could expect for such a facility.

If Lester wants to know the “degree of civilization” in our society, he should embed himself in a for-profit prison for three days in any state in this country. He would quickly come to believe he was living in the Dark Ages.

If you truly want to know the quality of a for-profit prison, just stand outside the facility during shift change. The guards are generally obese, unkempt, whining about one thing or another, and sharing crude, rude racist/sexist/homophobic points of view with each other. They hate the workplaces they are entering or leaving.

And thousands of inmates pay dearly on a daily basis because of the guards’ dissatisfaction with everything about their miserable lives.

It is said to be that quality in the human race that gives humans the capacity to love, be compassionate, be charitable, be kind and giving, and extend unconditional support to each and every human being on Earth.

But what man has in reality is the ability to use the written word, regardless of the language, to express what they would like humanity to be, all the while knowing that humanity does not get better, only worse as time relentlessly marches toward the ultimate calamity.

This is why man creates a make-believe humanity through great pieces of literature and poems and religions just to have the ability to cope with real humanity on a daily basis.

Take, for example, a CNN report today about parents in a rural area in India who buried their four-day old baby girl alive in an isolated grave because they wanted a son. Parents in India prefer sons over daughters so many times they bury unwanted baby girls alive in unmarked graves. Fortunately, the cries of this baby girl, who had been in the grave for roughly six hours, were heard by passing villagers who rescued her. Weighing just 3.3 pounds, she is now fighting for life in the ICU of an area hospital.

Then there is the report several days ago about the Sussex County, New Jersey man who terrorized his neighbors because they would not let him have sex with their farm animals, most preferably their horses and cows. A British news report in 2017 referred to these kinds of people as “zoophiles.”

And then there is today’s report about the three assisted living facility workers who forced elderly patients with dementia to fight each other as part of their “Dementia Fight Club.” Investigators discovered one filmed staged fight between two elderly females, a 70-year-old and a 73-year-old, who were encouraged to hurt each other by the charged trio. In another filmed fight, an elderly woman being forced to fight is heard begging, “Let go, help me, help me, let go.”

Self-described humanitarians will rush to the defense of humanity, saying these are aberrations in human behavior.

Really?

Just watch the local and national news each day which features one report after another of man’s inhumanity to man through wars, atrocities, poverty, starvation, mass human displacement, crimes, schemes, frauds, and that is just touching the surface of the inhumanity barrel.

It is both ironical and paradoxical that prior to national news reports about “Inspiring America” or “America Strong” we must watch an SPCA commercial showing terribly abused, beaten, starved, neglected and abandoned animals by human beings.

Humans are destroying each other at a record pace while they engage in unchecked activities deliberately designed to destroy all life itself on this Earth.

But I have faith in the Earth. Nature will eventually intervene with a plague or some catastrophic war that will virtually wipe out all of humanity.

And perhaps, just perhaps, peace and goodness—the kind the Earth knew before humans polluted it with their “humanity”—may return to the natural existence of life.