It looks like tomorrow is the execution date for one of our homegrown terrorists :

An unrepentant Paul Hill boasted Tuesday on the eve of his execution for the shotgun slaying of an abortion doctor: “I expect a great reward in heaven.”

Barring an unlikely last-minute stay, the 49-year-old former minister will be put to death by lethal injection Wednesday evening for the 1994 murders in Pensacola of Dr. John Britton and his escort. Hill has not appealed.
. . .
In a jailhouse interview, Hill suggested the state will be making a martyr out of him.

“The sooner I am executed … the sooner I am going to heaven,” he said. “I expect a great reward in heaven. I am looking forward to glory. I don’t feel remorse.”

“More people should act as I have acted,” Hill added.

“A great reward in heaven”? Umm…last time I checked, the Bible doesn’t have any footnotes next to “thou shalt not kill”. Murder is murder and I’m glad this guy isn’t getting any special treatment by the anti-abortion conservatives who run this country.

That said, I still think the death penalty is bullshit. It’s not that I don’t think there are some crimes severe enough to take someone’s life, but I don’t trust the system enough to accurately decide whether or not someone deserves to die.

Luckily, I’m not the only one that sees things this way. In January, Illinois Gov. George Ryan commuted the death sentences of every inmate on death row by citing serious disparities :

The death penalty has been abolished in 12 states. In none of these states has the homicide rate increased. In Illinois last year we had about 1000 murders, only 2 percent of that 1000 were sentenced to death. Where is the fairness and equality in that? The death penalty in Illinois is not imposed fairly or uniformly because of the absence of standards for the 102 Illinois State Attorneys, who must decide whether to request the death sentence. Should geography be a factor in determining who gets the death sentence? I don’t think so but in Illinois it makes a difference. You are 5 times more likely to get a death sentence for first degree murder in the rural area of Illinois than you are in Cook County. Where is the justice and fairness in that ? where is the proportionality?

The Most Reverend Desmond Tutu wrote to me this week stating that “to take a life when a life has been lost is revenge, it is not justice. He says justice allows for mercy, clemency and compassion. These virtues are not weakness.”

“In fact the most glaring weakness is that no matter how efficient and fair the death penalty may seem in theory, in actual practice it is primarily inflicted upon the weak, the poor, the ignorant and against racial minorities. ” That was a quote from Former California Governor Pat Brown. He wrote that in his book ? Public Justice, Private Mercy he wrote that nearly 50 years ago ? nothing has changed in nearly 50 years.

And today, a federal court has overturned another 100+ death sentences :

A federal appeals court threw out more than 100 death sentences in Arizona, Montana and Idaho on Tuesday because the inmates were sent to death row by judges instead of juries.

The case stems from a 2002 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, in which the high court found that juries, not judges, must render death sentences. But the Supreme Court left unclear whether the new rules should apply retroactively to inmates awaiting execution.

In an 8-3 vote, the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said all condemned inmates sentenced by a judge should have their sentences commuted to life in prison.

Although today’s action was for much different reasons that Gov. Ryan’s, both actions go a long way toward strengthening the existing use of the death penalty by helping eliminate the racial and economic disparities as well as do more to ensure the guilt of those being executed.

My biggest problem with the death penalty isn’t the whole “killing people to show that killing people is wrong” hypocrisy, but the fact that, as great as our legal system is, it’ll never be perfect enough to prove that someone deserves to die. Since 1973, 111 people have been released from death row. When we’ve got a system where more than 100 people have been falsely “proven” to deserve death, then we should at the very least have a moratorium on execution until we can figure out what the hell is going wrong. (The Death Penalty Information Center is a great resource for anti-death penalty information)

Death Penalty Fun Fact :
Did you know that when George W. Bush was governor of Texas he oversaw a record 152 executions? You’d think that someone who talks about Jesus as much as Dubya would be familiar with the idea that innocent people are sometimes put to death for crimes they didn’t commit (although in Texas they use lethal injection, not crucifixion).