World Gone Blind

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

Texas executed John King today. And before President Trump gets too excited, I should point out it wasn’t that John King (the CNN journalist), but rather a white supremacist, so the chief executive is down one fan.

This John King may have richly deserved his fate: he was one of three men convicted of lynching James Byrd, Jr., almost twenty-one years ago, by dragging him behind a pickup truck for a mile and a half till he was decapitated, then dragging the body another mile and a half just for fun.

My mother was from Texas, and taught me that while John King may have deserved it, I didn’t deserve it. People convicted of capital crimes are executed by the state. Louis XIV was right: I am the state.

My own state, Colorado, has — again — given up on death penalty repeal for yet another year, mainly for want of political courage of Democrats in power who mainly want to stay in power.

The young Democratic state senator, Julie Gonzales, who sponsored the bill, was not unaware of the feelings of many survivors of homicide victims, that the killers richly deserve their fates: her own father-in-law was a victim. But like me, she doesn’t want to close ranks with the killers by becoming one.

Is there anyone with an ounce of awareness who thinks Jesus of Nazareth, your local rabbi, or Mister Rogers would not similarly refuse to pump the poison, throw the switch, pull the trapdoor or the trigger on even the worst of us?

So Senator Gonzales — seeing a Democratic majority still without a spine, complaining that the process had been rushed (Colorado’s only been executing people since 1859) — pulled her bill to repeal the death penalty this year, to give them the time they demanded.

“So when this bill comes back next session,” she addressed her colleagues, “there will be nothing left to hide behind except this abhorrent, terrible practice.” Thus giving the bill, she said, what we rarely give the people we execute in this country.

A dignified death.