The state of South Carolina on Friday, Sept. 20, strapped down Freddie Owens and injected him with a chemical that’s usually used to euthanize pets. In the days before the execution, a key witness against him admitted testifying falsely at trial to save himself, and said Owens had nothing to do with the 1999 murder for which he was convicted. But that didn’t matter. Owens, also known as Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah, was put to death.
In Texas they’re getting ready to kill Robert Roberson next month. Roberson was convicted of killing his 2-year-old child in 2002 based on the controversial “shaken baby syndrome” hypothesis, which has been widely branded as junk science. In the days before the child’s death, she was running a fever, and an emergency room doctor prescribed an antihistamine that can cause fatal respiratory distress in young children.
When Roberson brought her back to the ER, law enforcement officials didn’t like the way he was acting — unemotional and detached — and concluded it was evidence of guilt. It was likely evidence of his autism.
The detective who testified against him now realizes that and is urging clemency so that Roberson is not put to death for a crime that he did not commit and that did not even occur, because evidence suggests the child died from pneumonia and septic shock.
But Roberson is scheduled to be put to death for shaking her to death anyway.
Death sentences and executions, even for actual murderers, are relics of primitive societies in which leaders and their underlings ritually killed to expiate perceived evil, propitiate the gods and calm fears of social chaos.
So what do death sentences become when the witnesses, police, prosecutors and judges admit that their former testimony or conclusions were wrong and the accused is innocent, and the executions proceed anyway?
They cross the line that separates civilization from savagery, criminal justice from black magic, accountability from ritualistic human sacrifice. They become false religion, dependent on totems such as “shaken baby syndrome,” and shamanistic revelation — for example, the suspect looked guilty. They promulgate superstitions, such as the magical pretense that the killing deters future crime. They satisfy our primordial demand for guilt and punishment and our illusion of moral cleansing.
What they cannot satisfy is the delusion that our society is just and merciful. The appetite for blame and blood is voracious and repeatedly beats back our aspiration to be a more enlightened, humane and modern nation. President Biden, soon to leave office, promised as a candidate he would do away with federal death sentences but has not acted.
Former President Trump, seeking reelection, recently reiterated his long-standing demand to quickly execute drug dealers.
But even when we kill the guilty, we become needlessly cruel. When we kill the conceivably innocent, we become a mockery of ourselves and our supposed allegiance to justice.
The Los Angeles Times
