April is indeed the cruelest month, certainly here in Arkansas, mixing the early buds of spring on every hillside with the orgy of executions to take place as the occupants of death row meet their fate one by one. Or two by two. The very thought should be enough to send a shiver through every God-fearing citizen of the state. That it won't only adds to the whole sad saga of Justice, Mercy et al. vs. the State of Arkansas.
He who takes a single life, a Talmudic sage warned long ago, it is as if he had destroyed a whole world. For that's the effect of blotting out one man's life with all its memories of the past and resolves for the future. We the People are then left to wash the blood off our hands or come up with rationalizations for taking human life. But vengeance is mine, sayeth the State of Arkansas as it does its worst to empty death row before its precious supply of fatal drugs runs out. Which explains why these fatal proceedings had to be such a rush job--complete with all the sloppiness that goes with hurried work.
To quote the federal judge who presided over this hurry-up-and-kill spectacle, the Hon. D. Price Marshall, the whole bloody business he'd been called on to cloak in legality was "beyond imperfect; it was shoddy." The judge noted that state law requires the public be allowed sufficient time to comment on any decision to grant clemency to one of the condemned, Jason McGehee by name, and that his rights would be violated if he were put to death in so hurried a manner. It took His Honor more than an hour to cite all the errors the almighty State of Arkansas had made in its haste to kill these men. Yet he concluded that despite all those errors, each of the condemned in this long parade had had sufficient time to prepare his case, years of it, while they contemplated their duly scheduled demise. How would you like to spend your time cooped up with little to do but try to find some way, any way, to avoid your appointment with death?
"The inmates and their counsel knew this train was coming," Judge Marshall concluded. Which might only have added to the pain of their every waking and even sleeping hour. "Even in our sleep," the Greek poet Aeschylus wrote long ago, "pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God." But this heaven-sent wisdom is now to be wiped out by the sovereign State of Arkansas in its own faux wisdom, which knows no mercy.
No one ever came away with clean hands after exercising power in the name of the almighty state, but seldom have so many in so short a time come away with hands so drenched in blood, Lord have mercy on their souls. It's enough to make one wonder just who is being condemned in this court--the prisoner or We the People in whose name these sentences are to be carried out in this modern danse macabre?
There is a way out of this bloody dead end for both the condemned and those in whose name they are sentenced to death. And it is neither complicated nor burdensome. Just strike the death penalty from the books and sleep better o'night. Winthrop Rockefeller never did a better day's work when he simply commuted the death sentences of every man on death row, leaving an example that shines to this day. Wasn't there a time when his name was applauded in Republican circles? Who will applaud the name of this state's Republican governor in the future? It's a question all thinking--and feeling--citizens would do well to ponder. Before it is too late.
Editorial on 04/11/2017