Post by SoulTrainOz on Jul 12, 2006 5:00:18 GMT -5
Nearly all of Glen Wilcher's appeals are up, and the 43-year-old who killed 2 Scott County women in 1982 will be killed tonight at Parchman.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans on Monday turned down petitions by Wilcher and his attorney, Cliff Johnson of Jackson. Johnson said appeals were filed immediately with the U.S. Supreme Court.
The death penalty.
It's hard to makes sense of it all.
How do I sit down to my daughter in a few years and explain to her why it is OK to kill a man.
"Well, honey, this man did a bad thing. He took the life of 2 women, 2 nice women who didn't deserved to be hurt. He hurt them, and took their life away, and so uhh, the governor and, uhh, the Supreme Court say it's OK to take his life away."
I can imagine I'll get a response something like, "Well, if it was bad for the bad man to take the life of the women, why isn't it bad to take his life?"
Hell, I don't know.
I can't bring myself to believe there is any time it is OK to kill another man in revenge.
But that is exactly what we do every time we execute someone at Parchman.
Bringing back the death penalty in Mississippi in 1983 hasn't coerced people to stop killing one another. In fact, I am more and more surprised every day at the stupidity of people who commit crimes in Greenville, the Delta, Mississippi and across the country.
You go to a bar, get drunk and catch a ride home from 2 women who are nice enough to offer. Then, you send them down an abandoned road and kill them.
It's stupid stuff, and no amount of legislation is going to make people like Glen Wilcher get it.
Do you think that if Jimmy Lee Gray had been executed by Mississippi a year and a half earlier, that would have made Wilcher think twice before killing Katie Belle Moore and Velma Odell Noblin?
I doubt it.
People have been executed for crimes for thousands of years, yet stupid people keep committing stupid crimes, and the rest of us are forced to deal with the aftermath.
And we continue to deal with it by killing.
Yes, it is expensive as hell to keep people in prison. I am one of the main bangers of the drum talking about the amount of money spent on prisoners in Mississippi each year versus the amount of money spent on children in the classroom.
I didn't say the issue was an easy one to solve, but I do believe if we give our kids more of a chance from an educational standpoint, maybe we wouldn't have as many death row inmates.
I do believe that education and the opportunity to make a better living for yourself is more of a deterrent than prison-style execution.
What I do know is that the execution of Wilcher tonight isn't going to be a deterrent for the next murderer in Mississippi. I know that the 70 others on death row that may or may not be executed likely aren't deterrents for the next Wilcher or Gray or Edward E. Johnson (executed by Mississippi in 1987) or Connie Evans (1987) or Leo Edwards Jr. (1989) or Tracy Alan Hansen (2002) or Jesse D. Williams (2002) or John B. Nixon Sr. (2005).
Maybe there is no correct answer, but before my daughter or son is old enough to ask those types of probing questions, I want to be able to give them an answer that a child can understand.
(source: Delta Democrat Times - Ross Reily is editor of the Delta Democrat Times)
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans on Monday turned down petitions by Wilcher and his attorney, Cliff Johnson of Jackson. Johnson said appeals were filed immediately with the U.S. Supreme Court.
The death penalty.
It's hard to makes sense of it all.
How do I sit down to my daughter in a few years and explain to her why it is OK to kill a man.
"Well, honey, this man did a bad thing. He took the life of 2 women, 2 nice women who didn't deserved to be hurt. He hurt them, and took their life away, and so uhh, the governor and, uhh, the Supreme Court say it's OK to take his life away."
I can imagine I'll get a response something like, "Well, if it was bad for the bad man to take the life of the women, why isn't it bad to take his life?"
Hell, I don't know.
I can't bring myself to believe there is any time it is OK to kill another man in revenge.
But that is exactly what we do every time we execute someone at Parchman.
Bringing back the death penalty in Mississippi in 1983 hasn't coerced people to stop killing one another. In fact, I am more and more surprised every day at the stupidity of people who commit crimes in Greenville, the Delta, Mississippi and across the country.
You go to a bar, get drunk and catch a ride home from 2 women who are nice enough to offer. Then, you send them down an abandoned road and kill them.
It's stupid stuff, and no amount of legislation is going to make people like Glen Wilcher get it.
Do you think that if Jimmy Lee Gray had been executed by Mississippi a year and a half earlier, that would have made Wilcher think twice before killing Katie Belle Moore and Velma Odell Noblin?
I doubt it.
People have been executed for crimes for thousands of years, yet stupid people keep committing stupid crimes, and the rest of us are forced to deal with the aftermath.
And we continue to deal with it by killing.
Yes, it is expensive as hell to keep people in prison. I am one of the main bangers of the drum talking about the amount of money spent on prisoners in Mississippi each year versus the amount of money spent on children in the classroom.
I didn't say the issue was an easy one to solve, but I do believe if we give our kids more of a chance from an educational standpoint, maybe we wouldn't have as many death row inmates.
I do believe that education and the opportunity to make a better living for yourself is more of a deterrent than prison-style execution.
What I do know is that the execution of Wilcher tonight isn't going to be a deterrent for the next murderer in Mississippi. I know that the 70 others on death row that may or may not be executed likely aren't deterrents for the next Wilcher or Gray or Edward E. Johnson (executed by Mississippi in 1987) or Connie Evans (1987) or Leo Edwards Jr. (1989) or Tracy Alan Hansen (2002) or Jesse D. Williams (2002) or John B. Nixon Sr. (2005).
Maybe there is no correct answer, but before my daughter or son is old enough to ask those types of probing questions, I want to be able to give them an answer that a child can understand.
(source: Delta Democrat Times - Ross Reily is editor of the Delta Democrat Times)