Almost Lost To The Other Side

Having witnessed the terrible effects murder has on people, I have always believed that the gallows was the only answer to those who kill. But there was a time when even my hardline belief in execution was tested.
The year was 1998 and on February 2 of that year, Karla Faye Tucker was to die by lethal injection in Texas for the 1984 murders of two people. And die she did. The British media picked up this story and for the most part was extremely sympathetic to the woman who had used a pick axe to snuff out the life of one of the victims. I remember the newspapers, from tabloid to broadsheets, filling their pages with pictures of the pretty Karla Faye and commentating how draconian having a death penalty in 1998 was.
Sky News covered it all, from interviews with people who had worked on death row and doctors explaining how lethal injection worked right through to the countdown of the execution itself. Being the ghoul that I happily admit to being, I was naturally glued to the station. In fact I recorded it all on video.


Karla Faye almost turned the author

And while I admit to being morbid, I will also admit that the British coverage, together with the murderesses pretty looks, almost swayed me into becoming an opponent of the death penalty. I had already heard my beloved heavy metal bands sing anti execution songs but whilst these had little to no effect, Karla Faye Tucker's looming fate almost certainly did.
Her change to Christianity and attempts to make life better for others in hopeless situations suckered me in for a while. Of course my gut felt it was merely being conned by a conniving, heartless killer, but for a few hours I did feel my heart going out to this doomed, young lady. Everyones opinions are challenged at some point in their lives, this is the nature of Life, and watching the constant live coverage from Texas, I struggled between thinking which punishment was 'right' to me. Death versus Life Without Parole.
Without doubt a true Life sentence (as opposed to the petty Life sentences we have in Britain) is the more harsh. of the two. Afterall a killer sent to prison for LIFE when he/she is say 25 years old, could face another 60 or 70 years locked in a 16ft by 12ft cell. Yes, they would have things like radios and books but the days of visiting pubs, travelling the world, etc would be gone forever. And this appealed to me, or to be more accurate it appealed to my more sadistic side.
I shudder to think how damaging 60 years in a single cell would be both spiritually and mentally, and surely this is what murderers deserved? To rot in mind and body, be forgotten about in some dank, fetid cell. This is what a pick axe killer should go through, I remember thinking. And the more damage I imagined getting heaped upon the prisoner, the more I began to think against the death penalty. Death is too quick, a human being who has comitted that foulest of crimes needed more.
Karla Faye Tucker, a wicked murderess a million miles from me in the Lone Star State had nearly turned me into another 'fan'. (She had hundreds of supporters in the UK).
Then, as if a switch had been flicked on inside my brain, my friends devastated face (her husband had been stabbed to death) appeared in my mind's eye and I came crashing back to my senses. I imagined rows, countless rows of coffins, all filled with the bodies of murder victims and my heart almost burst from my chest in utter grief and despair. I actually cried, not only for my friend who had lost her loving husband but for strangers the world over who had lost loved ones to evil, remorseless fiends.
No longer did I care about murderers spending 60 long years in cages and going slowly insane. It wasn't enough, they still had Life even if it was in chains. The victims had nothing save their graves and the families were left with an unfillable space for as long as they lived. There are visiting rooms and telephones in jail, the cemetery don't have them unfortunately.
50, 60, 70 years do not, cannot, equal the nothingness, the complete loss that victims of violent crime are left with. Both the dead and those left behind. There are no Christmasses, birthdays or letters for those lives who have been cruelly taken by a vicious thug, way before their time.
And so I was led back to my senses by thinking of the pain innocents have endured. (I know not everyone murdered has been innocent but im speaking for those who were.) The punishment for death will always be death in my eyes. I could not allow myself to give a proven killer another chance; it would be like a slap in the faces of thousands upon thousands of victims. And I don't have that wickedness.