A Fool Throws a Stone

I will tell you a story about life here. Once there was a snake, and once this snake came into the house of a man who had a son. The snake bit the man's son and the son died, so in his grief the man took up a knife and cut off the snake's tail. The next day the snake came back and said to the man, "Okay. Now, let's be friends."
The man said "You killed my son. We can never be friends and that is a pain I will keep in my heart forever, and I cut off your tail, and that is a pain you will carry in your heart forever and that is why we can never be friends"
Old Israeli woman

Michael Morales, an admitted murderer on Death Row down the street here, will not be executed any time soon.
A challenge to his execution was filed by none other than Ken "blowjob" Starr, former White House scum monger had filed an appeal on behalf of Morales saying that lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment.
Hounding one of our better Presidents (compared to our current one) was cruel and unusual for the country but Ole Ken didn't give a shit about that, yet ironically he may have ended the Death Penalty in the state of California by filing this appeal based on this particular legal and constitutional premise.
Monday night last we had our usual preparation for the murder of Morales here at San Quentin, the third in so many months.
Death Penalty Focus people, Lance, Stephanie, Shana, Morgan, and others, along with Natasha, atty from the ACLU were here, using the warmth of the kitchen in my house to brave the cold at the rally down at the gates.
Familiar folks now, ones I consider my friends since they've been here so many times lately.
I cannot stay awake past 10 pm and go to bed, leaving them and presumably Mike Farrell to their own devices in the house while I sleep, though I didn't see him (see previous blog entries). I think I heard his voice though, especially when Lance gets the news on his cell phone that the two anesthesologists , court ordered to do what they thought was "observe" the execution to insure that Morales was not in pain after the first injection of the chemical soup (there are 3).
They refused to participate as it became clear that they were not there as "observers" and would have been expected to intervene had they assessed that he was indeed in pain.
Not what we signed up for they said, doctors don't kill people, they're supposed to heal them. No can do.
No one knows who these doctors are but the medical community owes them a debt of gratitude for keeping the lines of medical ethics unblurred by revenge killings, meant to be clean and neat so the public won't object to this heinous act of what is no longer even momentarily thought of as a deterrent to crime.
So then what?-the state has the 2nd option: barbituates in a lethal dose to send the guy out.
One injection. Problem was they couldn't find a medical licensed person to administer it.
Not a doctor or nurse, not a dentist or tech-no one would start the IV and push the plunger to send this guy to his maker.
It sounds so crazy, and it IS.

The victim's family has a point when they say "Our daughter wasn't given the same consideration when Morales brutally raped and murdered her".
True.
Yet we have a constitution (what's left of it) that bars "cruel and unusual punishment". At least until Alberto Gonzales turns his sights to domestic torture issues, which should be any day now.

Any execution is supposed to be "humane", not unconstitutional by being "cruel and unusual" since we are not barbarians.
No, neither is Iran, China or Saudi Arabia, some in Africa, the only other countries that think executing criminals is useful to society somehow.
Even Russia no longer has the death penalty.
There was no question this time about Morales innocence. He admitted doing it and said he was on PCP at the time.
Hard to imagine anyone doing something like that without being on some mind bending drug. Yet it happens all the time.
I have no sympathy for Morales. I don't know anyone who does.
Not the peaceniks or Trotskyites or whacko Elvis impersonators who come to San Quentin to protest the death penalty every time there is one; boring us all with their long winded speeches, their outdated rhetoric about socialism or whatever diatribe they go off on in front of a microphone, making all of us opposed to the Death penalty look like nuts.

Yet one can't help but think about the race of the people executed here in the past 26 years since the Death Penalty has been reinstated in the US.
The last 3, still so fresh in my mind, have all been non white.
Stanley Williams: African American. Good reason to believe he was innocent. Not of being a criminal having committed numerous crimes in his life. Just likley not that particular one, the one he was sentenced to death for.
Clarence Ray Allen: Native American.
Michael Morales: Latino.
Some caucasians executed, but the death chamber's been pretty dark since it was refurbished in 1979..
People who talk about the hideousnous of the crimes committed by these guys miss the point.
It doesn't bring anyone back who has been murdered, it doesn't stop the next murder and the system is so rife with jailhouse informants, racism and shoddy legal work that it makes executions nothing more than a macabre indulgence of one of our most primitive impulses; Revenge.

Now the facade of "humaneness" has been cracked, our ridiculous belief that we are civilized administrators of justice in this mighty nation abridged.
We have Ken Starr to at least partially thank for this, though I wouldn't give him a dime for a cup of coffee if I saw him freezing in an alleyway in the dead of winter, disbarred in disgrace for being a scum mongering douchebag. Watch the DVD "The Hunting of the President" even though Bill Clinton was no Day at the Beach either, as my old friend Gianna would say.

The Death penalty is final. Even if years later a mistake was found to be made, it cannot be undone.
A Fool throws a stone into the sea
and all the wiseman in the village cannot pull it out
Cypriot Proverb

Medical professionals have redeeemd themselves, which gives me, at least, a sigh of relief, being one of them-http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/13931466.htm

To be continued..too tired now after 16 hrs of wageslavery