By Edwin Cooney
There is absolutely no pleasure for me writing this week’s commentary! Part of the reason for my lack of pleasure is that I don't fully comprehend either the cause or effect of this incident. Yet, somehow, I feel I ought to!
Last Thursday, I read in the New York Times about the execution of John William King. King had murdered James Byrd, Jr .back on Sunday, June 7th, 1998. James Byrd was a 49-year-old black man who was beaten, spray-painted, and chained to the back of a pickup truck and dragged along a back road near Jasper, Texas until he was dead. Three men, Lawrence Russell Brewer, John William King, and Shawn Allen Berry, were convicted of the crime in 1999.
According to the Times, King had done a stint in prison earlier and was clearly a racist. His body was covered with racist tattoos, one of which depicted a black man hanging by a noose. Brewer, who was executed in 2011, so abused the traditional condemned prisoner’s final meal that the privilege has been withdrawn in the State of Texas. Shawn Allen Berry, who will not be executed for the crime, will have to wait for the year 2038 to be eligible for parole.
To my mind, however, none of these men were fully human!
Everything about this crime is incomprehensible to me. King, according to the Times, kept his eyes closed as witnesses entered the death chamber. When asked by warden Bill Lewis if he had any last words to say, he simply said "no." He'd left a written final statement earlier and it read incredibly, “those who don't have the capital get the punishment."
In that statement, I suppose we get a glimpse into King's outlook on humanity. Apparently, King saw human value pretty much in monetary terms. Part of my non comprehension of this crime lies in the question: what could possibly drive someone to treat another living being as King, Brewer, and Berry treated James Byrd? The nature of their behavior is beyond even racism! It's animalistic! No human mind like theirs is even close to being normal. More to the point, it's even inadequate to simply label such behavior as “evil." Designating such an act as a “hate crime” is not instructive. We simply never learn from such designations!
The moral for me, a strong opponent of capital punishment, lies in the reality that right up there with doing something about climate change, our main task as human beings must be the task of learning to master our own minds.
Another disturbing fact that I learned from this article in the Times last Thursday was that John William King was the first white man in the history of Texas ever convicted of murdering a black man.
In case you wondered, I have no sympathy for either King, Brewer, or Berry. Whatever their anxieties may have been, they richly earned them. As for their lives, they destroyed them before the State of Texas got around to it. As for capital punishment, it has been labeled “legal murder” and it’s time to “delegalize" it.
To paraphrase King's final written statement:
Unless and until we use sufficient capital to understand and control our behavior, we're just skipping and tripping down the proverbial plank into permanent extinction!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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