It has been a few weeks since the state of Georgia wrongly executed Troy Davis. And despite this, it seems support for capital punishment grows in Connecticut engages in the death penalty porn trial of Joshua Komisarjevsky.

 

The murder trial of Komisarjevsky could have been avoided – he agreed to plead guilty to murder for life in prison, to avoid certain death. But the populace of Connecticut clearly has a blood lust.

 

Turning on the radio two weeks ago, I heard on WPLR Chaz and AJ playing the confession of Komisarjevsky for the drive time listeners. They warned children out of the room. They said they were the only ones who were going to play it on the air because everyone else was afraid to confront it.

 

I felt like it bordered on necrophiliac voyeurism to air Komisarjevsky’s confession and details of the murders. I turned it off.

 

Does it add anything to the debate to listen to this man’s darkest hour of telling exactly how he killed? Does it make us a better society to feed the violent visions in our head with Komisarjevsky’s tales of murder?

 

Nor did I need to hear Chaz and AJ call for the murder of Komisarjevsky and Hayes. Sometimes I feel a little lonely being a death penalty opponent when the entire tide of the Nutmeg state seems to fantasize about revenge on Komisarjevsky and Hayes.

 

Browsing through Facebook, I find it unsettling to see people of all stripe want an eye for an eye, and to imagine scenarios where Hayes and Komisarjevsky suffer the same fate they inflicted on others. One cute little grandmother posted “Fry their asses now why wait 10 to 20 years ?”

 

A forty-something fisherman: “They should receive the same type of death as they dished out. Except with onlookers.”

 

Another man: “They should hang that SOB on a hook and have Dr.Petit beat him like a pinata with a bat then have the grandparents tie him to a bed and set his fn ass on fire.”

 

A woman who went to Catholic high school with me: “Agreed. 100% ! You know there are ppl out there that think they should get a fair trial.”

 

Another woman: “you are right....the police should have shot them both on scene...what bothers me is why why why do they have to broadcast the horrific acts to those poor children and mom on national tv....keep it in the court room and no where else...

 

Same woman: “Put them on the Cheshire Green and everyone turn a blind eye and let Dr. Petit kill them....I understand that is not a christian thing to feel but they are pure EVIL...they make me physically ill...and very sad.”

 

I responded: “The death penalty is cruel, inhumane and not a punishment that we should mete out in a civilized society. I understand that many people are upset by hearing the monstrous actions taken by Hayes and Komijarevsky.

 

“Human beings can be monsters, and all history is witness to this cruelty man is capable of. Both Hayes and Komijarevsky would have pled guilty in exchange for life sentences. Instead, the state of Connecticut has chosen to drag us all through this nightmare of hearing intimate details of insane murder to satisfy bloodlust and vengeance.

 

“I understand the raw emotional power these crimes generate, and I know that my stance here is probably not appreciated. Yet when we as a society determine that we should hold the power of death over the perpetrators of these crimes, we sink to their level, and are no better than the murderers themselves.”

 

Had I read even closer the comments and saw my classmate (who I know sat through classes about turning the other cheek) advocated for the removal of due process in this case, my response would have been more impassioned.

 

It would be just like a modern American to remove an 800-year-old hard fought civil right like due process for Hayes and Komijarevsky, then complain when it’s not there for them after they are accused of a crime, falsely or rightly.

 

Due process should protect life, even that of someone accused of a grisly crime. But this is hardly the first grisly crime of this nature in the annals of humanity.

 

Right after I graduated high school, I read Truman Capote’s classic In Cold Blood. That true story recounts how on November 15, 1959, ex-cons Richard “Dick” Hickock and Perry Smith brutally executed Herb Clutter, his wife Bonnie and their youngest two children, Nancy and Kenyon in Holcomb, Kansas.

 

Hickock and Smith heard a jailhouse rumor about Clutter keeping a safe full of cash in his house. Not true, as Clutter, a successful farmer, did all of his business by check, to better track money.

 

Capote quotes Smith as saying about Herb Clutter: "I didn't want to harm the man. I thought he was a very nice gentleman. Soft spoken. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat."

 

The state of Kansas executed Smith and Hickock. The imposition of capital punishment on those two men clearly did not protect the Petit family from Hayes and Komijarevsky. Nor will the state of Connecticut killing Hayes and Komijarevsky protect anyone from the next crazy murderers.

 

Life is insecurity and instability. We cannot protect ourselves from all possible threats, and we cannot possibly prevent murders in the future; especially not when our government is the most active purveyor of violence on the planet.

 

Reconciling these death sentences becomes even more insane if Hickock or Smith or Komisarjevsky or Hayes were members of the U.S. armed forces, and the family they killed was Iraqi or Afghani. The punishment would be very different.

 

For example, on September 23, 2011, at the Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington State, Pfc. Andrew Holmes confessed to killing an unarmed Afghani 15-year-old and carrying the teen’s finger as a trophy.

 

"You aimed a fully loaded squad automatic weapon at a child that stood 15 feet away," said Lt. Col. Kwasi Hawks, (according to a story in the LA Times.)

 

Holmes gave a tearful courtroom confession, and received seven years in a plea bargain. The judge wanted to give him 15, because Holmes did not understand the moral gravity of what occurred. Clearly, the Army doesn’t either, not with its kill squads that terrorize innocent civilians.

 

And when members of our own society visit that same behavior on our neighbors, we call for bloody revenge and death. We are animals, each and every one of us. To look in the mirror and realize that you are no better than a Hayes or a Komisarjevsky or a Holmes or a Hickock or a Smith is to be brutally honest with yourself.

 

The next step is to contain those impulses and to vow to never put anyone else in a situation where they have to exercise the killer in themselves.

 

We must not visit murder on anyone, not even those who commit such foul, barbaric crimes. Until we can do this as a society, and eliminate capital punishment we are still no more advanced than our prehistoric precursors who wrote on cave walls

 

Top...