The death penalty is quite a thing. It has been around for all the ages, this notion of being sentenced to die for a crime committed.
The first established death penalty laws date as far back as the eighteenth century B.C. There was a king then, King Hammurabi of Babylon, who set forth an order. It codified the death penalty for 25 different crimes. Throughout many cultures and lands, to the very ends of the earth, we have seen this.
Our United States became official some 244 years ago. But the death penalty was on the shores long before the country was “established” in 1776. The mothership Britain influenced America’s use of the death penalty more than any other country.
When the early settlers came to the new world, they brought along, packed with their skivvies, the practice of capital punishment. The first recorded execution happened in Virginia. It was that of Captain George Kendall in the Jamestown colony in 1608. George, George, George. Accused of being a spy for Spain. So they put him in front of a firing squad and shot him to death.
In 1612, Virginia Governor Sir Thomas Dale enacted the Divine, Moral and Martial Laws, which provided the death penalty for even minor offenses. Divine and Moral, mind you. The crimes included stealing grapes, killing chickens, and trading with Indians. I guess they were big egg-eaters, like me.
So now, some 400 years after Kendall’s execution, we still have capital punishment here in America. Though it is illegal in 19 states, the other 31 states hold it legal. The debate, the laws, and the rules have gone back and forth over the years. Like a ping pong match. But the majority of the country has kept it in favor.
All this came to mind because on this date, November 2nd, in 1984, the first woman was executed in the United States since 1962. It appears that Capital Punishment was suspended in 1972, then reinstated in 1976. So the first woman to die for her crimes was Velma Marge Barfield. She was a serial killer. Not one of those slasher, sexual predator, eating body parts, serial killer. She was the variety that got the box of rat poison out and started sprinkling it in people’s drinks. People who were “bothersome” to her. She was only convicted of one murder but committed six in all. At any rate, the rat poison thing got her too. She died by lethal injection at Central Prison, in North Carolina, just after her last meal of one bag of Cheetos and two 8-ounce glass bottles of Coca-Cola. I’d want more than Cheetos.
As I mentioned, the Supreme Court lifted the moratorium on capital punishment in 1976. The case was Gregg v. Georgia. And since that time, only sixteen women have been executed in the United States. The big fact is that women represent less than 1.05% of the 1,526 executions performed in the United States since 1976.
That says to me one of two things. Either women are less violent. OR. We are smarter and better at getting away with murder, and other high crimes, like stealing grapes or killing chickens.
There is no way to tell how many of the 1526 people executed since 1976 may also have been innocent. Once those people are gone, that is the end of it. The courts don’t hear claims of innocence when the defendant is dead. But in those years there have been at least 18 cases with strong evidence of innocence.
We know that the last person to be executed was Christopher Andre Vialva, who died one month and eight days ago by lethal injection in federal prison.
People are capable of horrible things. We see this most every day. I do not know what the answer to this is. I don’t know if it is right to kill someone for what they’ve done. It isn’t for me to decide. It seems very complicated. In fact, I don’t know how someone can be pro-life and pro-death penalty at the same time.
But. I don’t know a lot of things.
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“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
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“There is a certain right by which we many deprive a man of life, but none by which we may deprive him of death; this is mere cruelty.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits
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“Criminals do not die by the hands of the law. They die by the hands of other men.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman
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Dead because they did it. Or didn’t. But they’re dead now.
