Mentally Incapacitated woman executed in Virginia

When it comes to executions, the United States is a land of equal opportunity: black, white, male, female, mentally retarded, and - until recently - juveniles - all can be and have been put to death since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. To be sure, your chances ot being executed are 100-times greater if you are black and poor; and even greater than that if you are unlucky enough to be convicted in the states of Texas or Virginia. (a helpful fact sheet on executions in the US can be found (pdf file) here. 

Executions in the US rarely make the front page of the newspaper, while reports of stonings in Iran elicit cries of outrage among good Christians here.  In the US, we practice "humane" executions using lethal injections to put human beings "to sleep" just as we do with dogs and horses.  In 2010 the machinery of death continues unabated in 35 states with barely an outcry.

Only the year's 39th execution made headlines, since this time the state of Virginia was killing a woman - Teresa Lewis - who had an IQ of 72:

Lewis, 41, was condemned to death for plotting the 2002 killings of her husband Julian Lewis and his son, Charles "C.J." Lewis, to collect insurance money. She died by lethal injection at 9 EST tonight. The two men she conspired with to commit the killings were sentenced to life imprisonment.

Best-selling author John Grisham has called her execution unjust. The European Union asked the Virginia governor to commute her sentence to life. Bianca Jagger asked for clemency. Even Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad weighed in on Lewis, accusing the western media of having a double standard in reporting Lewis' execution, compared to the coverage of a woman in Iran who was sentenced to be stoned to death for adultery.

A commentator in the Badische Zeitung points out - correctly - that state-sponsored killing in the US has nothing to do with deterrence.  The sole purpose of executing people is - and this a great irony for a supposedly "Christian" nation - retribution:

Es geht letztlich allein um Vergeltung. Doch Hinrichtungen und die Achtung der Menschenwürde passen nicht zusammen. Wer für Demokratie eintritt, sollte sich für eine weltweite Ächtung der Todesstrafe einsetzen. Dass sich die USA so vehement sträuben, auf die alttestamentarische Form von Vergeltung zu verzichten und sogar in Kauf nehmen, in der Debatte um die Todesstrafe mit diktatorischen Regimen wie dem Iran, China oder Saudi-Arabien in einen Topf geworfen zu werden, bleibt aus europäischer Sicht nur schwer verständlich.

(This is nothing but retribution. But executions do not conform with respect for human life. Those who stand for democracy must condemn the death penalty everywhere.  It is difficult for Europeans to understand how the US can insist on adhering to an Old Testament form of retribution and accept being included with dictatorial regimes suche as China, Iran or Saudi Arabia in the debate over capital punishment.) 

As this same commentator points out, moral objections fall on deaf ears in the US.  Money, however, can be a persuasive argument. 

Immer wieder hört man, es sei weitaus teurer, einen Kandidaten bis zu seinem Tod in Hochsicherheitstrakten unterzubringen als in normalen Gefängnissen. In Zeiten knapper Kassen scheint ein solches Argument mehr Menschen zu überzeugen, als Proteste und Petitionen aus aller Welt. Man kann nicht umhin, dies zynisch zu nennen.

(One keeps hearing that it is far more expensive to keep an inmate on death row than in a normal prison facility.  In times of tight budgets this seems to convince more people than all the protests and petitions in the world.  This, to say the least, is pure cynicism.) 

Read my post on Friedrich Wilhelm Wagner, who led the effort to abolish the death penalty in Germany in 1949. 

Comments

[Ben in Virginia]

As a proud Virginia, I am always somewhat amused when folks weigh in on the subject of capitol crimes and punishment. People who are sentenced to this ultimate punishment have been through multiple trials and appeals. Nobody seems to look at the fact that this so-called mentally defective person plotted to murder somebody. As far as anyone I know s concerned, that alone is worth a trip to the gallows. What happened to others is irrelevant. Those individuals had their day and court and got what ever they got. Personally, I think they got off lightly, but that doesn't change the fact that she DID get what she deserved. Life is seldom fair. You plot and enable the death of people, you should forfeit your life.

[David]

As a proud Mainer, I like to point out that Maine abolished the death penalty in 1887 and still today has one of the lowest murder rates in the country.

Also, Maine abolished slavery at statehood in 1820, while Virgina went to war to preserve slavery.

It seems like executions are much more prevalent in the former slave states.