DC sniper execution

At 9:00 PM on Tuesday, November 10, the state of Virginia executed John Allen Muhammad, who was convicted in connection with the "Beltway sniper" killings of late 2002. this is something i have rather mixed feelings about, and i feel it deserves my written attention.

first, let me state: I unequivocally oppose the death penalty.
i don't believe it is any human being's right to choose that another human being should die, even if the human being in question has caused the deaths of others. i also know that the death penalty doesn't deter crime, and it costs taxpayers more than does sustaining a prisoner for the rest of his/her natural life.

that said, i was a resident of the DC area when all of this was going on. i attended high school 5 minutes across the Maryland border, and the sniper shootings took place early in my sophomore year. i approached it much the same way i approach anything that makes a large group of people very nervous: i laughed at it. while my mother was ducking and weaving through parking lots, i told her it was the most ridiculous thing i'd ever seen, because even when more than half a dozen people had been shot, there were still hundreds of thousands in the area and the chances that any given person would become a target were, although unpredictable, pretty slim.

then a 13-year-old kid at the middle school in my neighborhood got shot. on the front steps of his school.

the kid survived, and i heard he's an asshole now. regardless. you don't just go around shooting kids on their way into school in the morning. a person might have to be completely soulless to find that not utterly reprehensible. schools across the area cancelled extracurricular activities and kept their blinds closed--not just annoying, but also pretty damn scary.

Muhammad maintained his innocence until his last breath, giving no final statement and never any admission of guilt or remorse. if the accusations against him were correct, he brainwashed a teenager named Lee Boyd Malvo into joining him on a rampage that terrorized the residents of (at least) three jurisdictions for three weeks. he was tried in Virginia because that state has a reputation for executing convicted murderers. he was also sentenced to six life terms in Maryland, and is suspected in murders in states as far flung as Alabama and Arizona. not only did he end the lives of 10 people, but his manipulation of Malvo irreversibly changed the life of a young person in an indescribably negative way.

the governor of Virginia refused Muhammad's bid for clemency, which is not out of character for him. i don't really have strong feelings about that, but i wonder if i should. yes, he had the opportunity to prevent the death of another person and didn't take it. but i also think public officials should put the wishes of their constituents before their personal views. this is tricky, and i remember arguing about it in high school religion classes. if your constituents are religious conservatives and you are elected on the basis of your conservative religious views, then to vote accordingly is all well and good. if you run on a platform of strict adherence to any given constitution, then your religious beliefs should have nothing to do with your political actions. if you're a Catholic, like Governor Kaine, and you are personally opposed to the death penalty but the judicial system of your jurisdiction sentences convicted criminals to death, you should probably work through legislative means to change that practice, or allow it as the will of the people.

i lean toward the former. killing a violent criminal serves no purpose other than to affirm that killing is acceptable--which, ironically, is the very point we attempt to disprove in the act. i have never been one to support the status quo simply because it is the status quo, so maybe, instead of saying "this is the way it has always been," we should recognize that there are other, and dare i say better, ways of addressing violent crime. Muhammad killed no one else during his seven years in prison; thus, his execution was redundant as a means of protecting the public.

i won't make the argument that everyone deserves a second chance. i don't know that everyone does. but even if a convicted criminal doesn't choose to approach a life sentence as a second chance, never reforms, never shows any signs of remorse, at least the rest of us won't have the death of another human being on our conscience.