A jury of 12 has announced its verdict: Steven Hayes is to be sentenced to death. To many, this is a just outcome. To others, it is not. I won’t go into it again, because the reality is that I won’t change your mind and you won’t change mine. Three women lost their lives needlessly in 2007 and today, a man has been scheduled to lose his. In this game, there is only death. And with death, no one wins.
My only hope is that one day, we as a State can look back upon this and other sentences of death with a certain sadness coupled with the knowledge that those days are past us – that we no longer ask our citizens to stake their mental well being on the anguishing task of deciding the fate of another man’s life – that we are no longer in the business of adjudicating worthiness to breathe.
Until then, I mourn. For this morning, Steven Hayes was the only one with blood on his hands. Now it’s on all of ours.
[Update: Gamso has the eloquent words that I couldn't bring myself to write. Norm has the harsh ones. Scott points out, soberingly, that we've long had blood on our hands.]
Instead of being “for” or “against” the death penalty, I think there’s a third option that many are feeling today: ambivalence. Just as with the death sentence for Tim McVeigh, there aren’t a lot of people feeling sad for Hayes today. On the other hand, this is not a day for “celebration” either as some as put on Twitter. Perhaps that ambivalence deserves some “blood on our hands” but I don’t think many in society will mind.
Sadly, your original point is correct: there are no winners today, just sad reminders of a family destroyed and lives ruined.
How is being “ambivalent” not being “for”? There is no distinction there.
Ambivalent in the sense that so long as the guy is put away for life or sentenced to death, people don’t care what he gets. For those against the death penalty, its black and white, for some people though, there’s lots of shades of grey.
By “our hands” do you mean Jodi Rell’s?
The jury spoke for the State of Connecticut. Hayes will be executed for the State of Connecticut. We – the citizens – are to be protected by this. The killing is in our name, for our benefit. We are them and they are us.
It seems unlikely Rell will be governor if/when Hayes is executed, isn’t it?
“My only hope is that one day, we as a State can look back upon this and other sentences of death with a certain sadness coupled with the knowledge that those days are past us – that we no longer ask our citizens to stake their mental well being on the anguishing task of deciding the fate of another man’s life – that we are no longer in the business of adjudicating worthiness to breathe.”
Good grief–take off your skirt. Fact is, Gideon, that people in our society are called upon to make far more weighty decisions than whether this turd gets flushed or whether he hangs out in the pot for 20 odd years. Let’s take parole for example. Can anyone doubt that the grant/not grant decision is far more weighty than the decision to execute this POS?
I used to be a law clerk. I can tell you that I gave a lot more thought to how the cases were written than I would on the question of whether this turd should be flushed or whether he gets to stink up his small piece of earth for the next twenty-odd years.
And anguish? That’s just squeamishness masquerading as morality. Hayes deserves far worse than he is going to get. He deserves to have the KCl hurt. He deserves what he did to his victims. But he won’t get that. The question of killing him–I’d put more time into deciding whether to get one McRib or two.