Saturday, January 17, 2009

Should Nebraska Change The Death Penalty?

She cooperated and gave the two black masked gunmen all of the money in the register in midtown Omaha convenience store. But on their way out, one decided to stop and shoot this 42 year old lady to death.

Cowards.

They'll get caught someday. They'll get convicted someday. But they won't have to face Old Sparky, as folks liked to call Nebraska's electric chair. The Nebraska Supreme Court threw out the chair because it was too cruel to use for capital executions. If capital punishment survives the expected do-gooder lobbyist onslaught, the new method will most likely be lethal injection. Do the crime, get sleepy time.

One Nebraska state senator (yes, I did leave that in small letters instead of the more respective title case) has been in the way of approving a new means to exterminate vermin such as the ones who killed this lady. The new method will probably pass this time because the problem senator was term-limited out. And, with luck, maybe someday these lowly, cowardly creeps will be strapped to a gurney, put to sleep, and put away. Painlessly of course.

Hell, Nebraska makes death tougher on cows and pigs than on killers.

But before this terminal time-out, the creeps will get to live out most of their lives. By then, most Nebraskan's won't remember the early January day in Omaha and the fear this woman must have felt as these cowards took her life. Their attorneys and various do-gooders will battle the State of Nebraska and try to overturn their death row convictions because the offender will have learned how to paint or write poetry. They will have wed some lonely cow who thinks breeding in a cell under supervised visits is height of true human romance. By then, there will be value in their lives and they shouldn't have to pay for one...little mistake.

There was a time when Nebraska knew how to handle low-life killers. After all, Nebraska was the home of one of the first serial murderers. His name was Charles Starkweather. He killed nine innocent folks on a three-day or so killing spree in Lincoln and the farm country surrounding it. He fled West and rather than die in a gun battle with Wyoming Troopers, he gave up.

Cowards usually give up when they are about to die.

Starkweather was caught in November 1958. He was tried in May 1959. He had his date with Ole' Sparky in June 1959. He was buried in an unmarked grave until some do-gooder decided that was wrong and put a marker on him. Bruce Springsteen's song "Nebraska" was about this James Dean looking dropout who worked on a Lincoln garbage truck. The movie "Badlands" glorified him.

There were no movies or songs about the nine people he killed.

Do-gooders never waste time on those folks. They never see the loss of the nine, the loss of their families; the loss of their children's families; the family tree that never had a chance to flourish. They only see the "immorality"of the State killing a killer. What good does that do? (Nebraska has a record of a prison guard killed by a killer. That mistake was corrected the second time by Ole' Sparky. No more problem.)

Perhaps we should be more sympathetic. After all, times are tough. There are two war going on. The economy is bad and people need work. And, with a new administration, we are going to lose good housing like Guantanamo Bay before long.

So, before the Nebraska Unicameral votes in a new way to execute society's worst, before we have to listen to new "significant" songs and watch new "significant" movies, I have a win-win idea.

Let Nebraska adopt one of the Guantanamo Al Quida be-headers. Heck, I am sure the do-gooders think those folks should have a chance for a new productive life. Let him contract to handle Nebraska's executions. He can wear his black Arab hood and use a big knife that he pulls from a scabbard on his back. He can rant-out the death warrant. He can bind the convicted killer's hands behind his back and force him to kneel before a camera in front of a red prison basement wall with a big white N on it. Let the executions sounds be recorded and have the entire event broadcast live on the Internet.

After a couple of those, maybe the cowards-to-be will think twice about committing a violent crime in Nebraska.