Sympathy for the Devil?

An AP story in today’s SJ-R reports on the postponement of the execution of Michael Morales in California due to the state’s inability to comply with a federal order to administer the lethal injection in a manner that would ensure that he would not experience pain. Ben Weston, one of the prisoner’s attorneys, said that the postponement was proof that the state hasn’t yet figured out how to humanely carry out an execution. As someone familiar with the details of the crime that landed Morales on death row, Weston should know well just how difficult it can be to kill someone.

According to reports, Morales tried to strangle his victim, a 17-year-old girl named Terri Winchell, with a belt, but it broke during the struggle. He then beat her with a hammer, leaving 23 identifiable wounds in her skull. After dragging her into a vineyard, Morales raped the girl as she lay dying, and then stabbed her four times in the chest to make sure she was dead. Morales and his cousin Rick Ortega had planned the girl’s murder for weeks as “pay back” for the girl having dated a boy that Ortega was previously involved with. There have been no reports of Mike Farrell attempting to intervene on the girl’s behalf before the execution took place.

Readers of the AP story might be surprised by these grisly facts, because they weren’t included in the story. Neither was the name or age of his victim. The only mention of Morales’ crime was identifying him as a condemned killer, a factual description but one that fails to do justice to the reality of the situation.

I’m not suggesting that by not including the nature of his crime and only reporting on the ethical dilemmas and difficulties associated with state-sponsored executions, that this a liberal media conspiracy to sway public opinion. I do think, however, that it does provide the public with an incomplete picture of a situation involving one of the most contentious domestic issues that our country is faced with.

I’m conflicted over the death penalty. My instinct is that government-sponsored executions aren’t good for society. There is also the possibility that an innocent person could be put to death, although that possibility has become increasingly improbable with the introduction of better crime-solving techniques. But almost invariably, when I read the accounts of the crimes that have landed people in the chair or on the gurney, I can’t manage any sympathy for their plight nor can I imagine how society is better served by imprisoning them for the rest of their natural lives.

Even though I won’t be participating in any candlelight vigils, I wouldn’t be distraught if the death penalty were made illegal, provided that it is replaced with just punishment. This punishment wouldn’t involve lounging around a prison cell, lifting weights, and fending-off the occasional shank. It would involve a sentence that takes a lax view on what constitutes “cruel and unusual” and causes the convicted to long for the sweet release that comes from a lethal dose of barbiturate.

I believe that every person is born with the right to life and liberty, but that those rights aren’t inalienable. The point at which they should be forfeited is unclear. In Morales case, however, by the time he had delivered over 20 deathblows and made the decision to continue on with his homicidal pursuit, it is all too clear that he had crossed over the line that separates man from beast.

Ayn Rand once wrote that "pity for the guilty is treason to the innocent." To some, especially those put-off by Rand’s anti-egalitarian philosophy, her pronouncement may seem to be void of human compassion. But for many, absolute denunciation is an essential element of justice in murder cases and to qualify it in anyway is also to forgive it to some degree.

In the article previously mentioned, a prison official relayed that Morales smiled when told of his reprieve. How anguishing it must be for the family of the victim to learn that he can still experience moments of joy, 25 years after he cruelly, senselessly, and permanently extinguished the joy in her. How betrayed they must feel by all of the people who are working passionately and tirelessly, the same effort that Morales put into committing murder, to see that he lives a full life.

I don’t doubt the good intentions of Farrell, Sr. Helen Prejean, other death penalty opponents. They obviously believe that since it is too late to save the victim, their sympathy should lie with the condemned. I just happen to believe that society is no longer responsible for the well-being of people such as Morales. He sealed his own fate when he planned and brutally murdered Terri Winchell.