Capital punishment

From The Associated Press:

LUCASVILLE, Ohio (AP) — A man who called Satan his lord and said he enjoyed killing three people was executed Tuesday, keeping his promise to show the family of his victims no remorse for stabbing and beating them and stomping on them with steel-toed boots.

Darrell Ferguson’s mother said he made up the Satan worshipping and the claim that he took pleasure in the killings to ensure he was executed.

“He didn’t worship Satan. He used Satan to be put to death because he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life in prison,” said Donna Davis, who watched the execution by injection at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. “He’s in God’s hands now, and Satan is running.”

Ferguson, 28, the youngest person put to death in Ohio since 1962, asked for the death penalty at sentencing and chose not to pursue appeals, which could have delayed his execution for years. ...

Ferguson said nothing before he died to the witnesses for the victims. He taunted the victims’ family at his sentencing in 2003, saying that if released from prison, he would pick up where he left off.

“I will never show any remorse, even on the day I die,” he said in court.

Ferguson’s mother said he told her and other family members on Monday that he was sorry.

“He wasn’t going to say he was sorry to the victims’ family because he was afraid that it would stop his death,” Davis said. ...

Ferguson, who grew up in Dayton, frequently wandered the streets and spent nights in warehouses and alleys. He said at age 9 he began huffing — inhaling chemical vapors to achieve a feeling of euphoria. He started drinking at 15 and using crack cocaine at 18.

His mother said Ferguson was mentally ill, and his trial attorney Victor Hodge said Monday that he had given the court documents that showed Ferguson was borderline mentally retarded.
(End AP story)

I put this up here because I have conflicting emotions about the death penalty. Some people I have no trouble having executed. But those people are rare. It’s how the death sentence is imposed and carried out that bothers me, so I have to be against the death sentence on those grounds.

This Ferguson case points to all the conflict within me on the subject.

I’m glad West Virginia doesn’t have capital punishment. There are some occasions when I wish it did, but overall I’m glad it doesn’t.