Reprinted from Mike Malloy Website
The only woman on death row has been denied clemency and will be executed today in Georgia. The first woman to be executed in Georgia in over 70 years. Kelly Gissendaner will die at 7 PM ET. That is, if the "cloudy" lethal injection drugs actually work this time.
There is no humane way to kill a person. Murder is by definition inhumane. Whether by guillotine, firing squad, hanging, gassing, electrocution, or poisonous drugs. The logic employed by Necons to justify executions escapes me, as does the hypocrisy of upholding the sanctity of the life of a blastula while simultaneously endorsing the state-sanctioned murder of fully formed adult human beings.
How can you be both pro-life and pro-death and not have your head explode?
ThinkProgress has this background:
"Gissendaner was sentenced to death for planning the murder of her husband in 1997. Her lover, Gregory Owen, carried out the actual kidnapping and murder of Douglas Gissendaner, but received life in prison for confessing and testifying against his former partner."
So she didn't even commit the actual killing. She set the plan in motion, but the actual murderer has a lesser sentence. How is justice served here? Who benefits from the death of this woman, or anyone on death row? Her adult children begged the courts to reconsider, explaining that the loss of their mother will not resurrect their father, nor would he have wanted to see her put to death. No matter. She will die.
Not even the fact that Gissendaner earned a theology degree in prison and has been ministering to other prisoners makes a difference.
CNN details these failed efforts:
"Faith leaders have also launched a campaign to have Gissendaner's death sentence commuted to life without parole because they believe she is, in the words of the Apostle Paul, "a new creation." They include Gissendaner's former professor, Jennifer McBride, and German theologian Jurgen Moltmann, renowned for his work on the theology of hope.
"'If we care about the prison system being a place of rehabilitation, then she is a success case,' said McBride, who teaches religion at Wartburg College in Iowa. 'Kelly has had really a complete transformation. There is clear evidence of that in the reconciliation with her children and the day-in and day-out of how she treats prison staff and her fellow inmates.
"'We are not asking for her to get out of prison,' McBride said. 'We are asking for her sentence to be life in prison without parole. That's what she wants. She wants to stay in prison. She is doing so much good there.'"
It seems we should end the pretense that our penal system is at all concernd with rehabilitation. Just drop the farce. Admit there is big money in locking people up and killing them at will and move on already.
We haven't evolved from the "eye for an eye" form of justice practiced thousands of years ago. Forgiveness and redemption is the foundation of Christianity, but all of Jesus' teaching of loving our enemies and turning the other cheek is lost on latter-day believers. For all the Bible-beaters who want to see the Ten Commandments posted in every hall of Justice and treated as law, how do they reconcile "thou shalt not kill" with the death penalty?
Do the commandments only apply to criminals? You would assume that the upstanding law-abiding citizens would have to follow the same directives as laid forth by God...
Yet not even a direct plea from Pope Francis moved the parole board. Here was his letter, as dictated to an American Archbishop:
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