The Death Penalty Circus Comes To Town

Wow, hard to believe little ol' Raleigh, NC, was the center of the media universe for about an hour and a half, in commemoration of the 1000th execution since the reinstatement of capital punishment.




Let me, as a disclaimer, state that I am for the death penalty. Like Jake Brigance said in A Time to Kill, my problem with the death penalty is that we do not use it enough. Plus, Ron White of Blue Collar Comedy fame says this of Texas - if you kill someone in Texas, we will kill you back. I kind of like living in a state where that is the case.

(As a sidebar, I have always thought it funny that lots of people who oppose the death penalty are in favor of abortion, and many who are in favor of capital punishment oppose abortion. It's just funny to me - either you're opposed to killing or you aren't. But I digress...)

Look, I understand the opposition to capital punishment. It is the most extreme of punishments for the most extreme of crimes. I certainly can understand why people would be against it on principle.

But as for the media circus that surrounded the execution of Kenneth Boyd - well, 1000 is nothing but a number, I suppose. Remember the 1000th person killed in Iraq? I didn't think so. But you do remember all the hype, undoubtedly.

Since Raleigh is not a high-profile hotspot and Boyd is not a high-profile case (he admitted the killings and told the authorities to "come and arrest me"), there was not the star-power that is being raised for Stanley "Tookie" Williams. But about 150 people did gather to protest.

Among the things the protestors did was to attempt to breach the prison walls (trying to break in to a prison?), a candlelight vigil, and a reading of all 1000 names of those executed (remember Ted Koppel trying this with soldiers on Nightline?)

At 2:15 AM, Boyd slipped quietly into that good night, having paid his debt for a brutal double-murder. At that point, you think the circus would pack up and leave town, and it did, headed to Sacramento to start begging for Tookie's life. But there was one comment made by a protestor that stuck in my boxers:

One thousand executions - that's one thousand lives needlessly lost.

Now wait just a damn minute.

As near as I can tell, there are two main arguments against capital punishment that hold water - it doesn't deter capital crimes, and/or two wrongs don't make a right. I don't agree with either, but I get where that comes from.

But 1000 lives needlessly lost? Of convicted murderers? Weren't the lives of Kenneth Boyd's victims - his estranged wife and his father - needlessly lost?

The best estimate of the number of victims of the 1000 executed murderers is just under 1,900. Now those were lives needlessly lost.

But alas, the circus has moved on - before I can even post this, #1,001 has taken place, just 200 miles away in Columbia, South Carolina. Just maybe, though, there is some justice - or peace - for the 1,900 needlessly lost.