As long as there is a death penalty in the United States, as long as the government persists in the barbaric practice of having the state kill those convicted of the most egregious murders, as long as the government continues to kill by lethal injection, there will continue to be egregious, shameful, disgraceful, inhuman, unfathomable executions.
Last week it was the Virginia execution of Teresa Lewis, a woman with a 72 IQ who was not the shooter in the double murder that led to her execution on Thursday. The two male gunmen each received life in prison. Little, whose guilt was never in doubt, pleaded guilty, waived her right to a jury trial on punishment, and to her then attorney’s surprise, was sentenced to death by a judge without a jury. The judge said she was the “head of the serpent.” I wrote that if this execution was justice, justice was an ass.
And now Georgia plans on executing Brandon Rhode on Monday.