I have just watched a program with Trevor McDonald Inside Death Row based in the USA. He was talking to a man who seven years ago, as he was coming down off methadone got into a 24 year old woman’s home under the disguise of being lost and needing a phone and while she was there with her four year old daughter decided he was going to rape her.
Unable to go through with it for undisclosed reasons he then cut both their throats and killed them. They had seen his face. He was arrested and sent to death row where hes been since and will stay as hes next inline for execution.
In the state of Indiana death is by lethal injection administered by the jail warden.
The prisoner was asked did he deserve to die and he said yes. He cut the throat of a very young girl who in his own words ” was at the beginning of her life and I ended it”- that act more than her mothers murder has made him the most hated on all death row. I guess even murderers have a code of conscience somewhere.
Watching it I was struck by two things
1. He fully admitted his guilt and appeared to show remorse.
2. I didn’t believe he was sorry at all.
When asked straight away about his life he proceeded to tell a tale of abuse, beatings and drugs all the usual stuff that prisoners spout when they want a get out of jail free card. He admitted he did it but not that he was guilty. That it was his mind that chose that path that day and his hand that took those lives.
Yes we can argue that he wasn’t thinking straight and maybe it would have been different had he of not been in that state but the fact is he was, by his own doing and so there in ergo he is guilty.
We all have pasts. Some better, some worse, some that make us take different steps to the ones intended for us but we are all responsible for our choices, our urges if we should act on them.
The interview was trying to show him in a compassionate light, but how can we feel sorry for someone who could have walked away that day. Who didn’t have to kill those people?
My partner and I came to loggerheads on it.
He thinks that he should be forgiven. That his life is over soon too and its a waste- me I think he deserves to die. I think lethal injection is too good. You take a life, you give your life and his life shouldn’t be taken by a nice injection that will euthanise him.
That mom bled to death choking on her own blood, as her daughter did. He showed no compassion for them. No humanity. Why should he get it?
In the USA, life means life and you serve your sentence. Death means death even if you wait 34 years for it. It comes.
Seven years ago that man who is oh so sorry now the cameras are on him, walked into that home and had every intention of raping the mother. Of causing physical and mental, as well as emotional harm on her to satisfy his own twisted needs.
He walked out of there a double murderer. A child killer, a death row prisoner and he deserves every bit of death hes got coming to him.
Do you agree with me or not?
