November 21, 2009
UTNE READER

A Split Second. A Life’s Sentence.

(Page 3 of 3)

Mar.-Apr. 2008
by Andrew Papke, from the Texas Observer 
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How much more or less, then, is the chasm between you and me? Between us and the condemned? As a teen, did you really never drive home with a few too many drinks under your belt? Have you never been to a horror movie and commented on how cool it was watching someone get beaten, shot, or stabbed? Have you never been to a concert and smelled something that didn’t smell quite like tobacco? Have you not listened to your favorite musician, knowing the money you spent on the album was blown on blow? Do the video games your kids play give them extra points for shooting someone? Have we not all smirked at that? Have we not at least shrugged it off?

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Choices are made, and the best of judgment calls are available to each of us at every turn. These seemingly insignificant decisions, the small mistakes that compromise us, can veer out of control quicker than we can react. Suddenly we are blindsided by something happening, and before we could have said “I could never end up like that,” it doesn’t turn out that way. Once the hooks are set in our souls, things we never could have imagined doing can explode into acts that require recompense. Sometimes that price overextends every credit available: A victim’s life can never be brought back from the grave, period.

Does that one life in exchange, an eye for an eye, change anything for that victim’s family? Truth is, now there is another victim’s family who suffers the same fate. Only this time, it is at the hands of the state.

Justice may be lost, but justice will be done. For a citizen turned drug addict turned killer, Lady Justice doles out penance through the same vein. Murder is just a shot away.

 

Excerpted from the Texas Observer(Nov. 16, 2007). Subscriptions: $32/yr. (24 issues) from 307 W. Seventh St., Austin, TX 78701; www.texasobserver.org.

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