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Dear Reader,
It was recently brought to my attention that my writing lacks compassion and that maybe I should apologize for what I did. There is also mention that my writing comes off as if I had been "terribly wronged by the system" and maybe I should write a brief analysis as to how I feel about that. I welcome the feedback. This site has my reasons for being and your reasons for why you find yourself reading it now. My reasons are multiple.
I know that most people do not understand the procedures and boundaries of capital punishment. Although many of you have a pretty good idea what it is, you don't really know enough to formulate more than a few questions. Most, if not everything you know about the death penalty derives from what you receive from news media accounts. That's good enough for some people until the new media give reasons for military deployments, increases in tax revenue, why the expenses for your medical coverage went up while the services decreased, and how the environment becomes more polluted everyday while the government proclaims that they're doing everything they can do to clean it up and force corporate institutions to pay for it. Everyone believes the media accounts of how the criminal justice system works and how it comes to pass that all the laws are written with your safety and social stability in mind, if not at heart. The reasons given for the passage of specific criminal laws invariably support the notion that the reason you elected your legislators was to create statutes which will always keep you safe from harm; safe from the unknown and the unknowable; keep you safe from your horror chamber of fears. Indeed, that's only a narrow characterisation of their duties as your representative in government. Where do we address those duties which they feel concern themselves to a further degree? The impulsion they feel fro re-election to office; the compulsion they feel to compensate for the contributions which special interests loaned to them during the campaign, the dedication they devote to having their names associated with greatness. Certainly they did not put me here. I recognize that.
I'll address the issue of why I do not seem to apologize for what I did. I am perplexed by this accusation insomuch as this site is not the proper means nor the proper method to apologize for the pain and the grief for which I am responsible. The venue in and of itself is improper. Another reason why I question the premise is because I do not truly understand the question in the context of this web page. Even if the intent of this page was meant as a forum for my apology; to Whom should I direct the apology? My beliefs hold that one should live a life for which apologies are not necessary and, failing that, when transgressions are committed, apology must be made and redress forwarded privately to those who have been wronged or harmed. Not only would my apology here be considered cowardly, it would be dismissed as insincere.
There is within the Texas Department of Criminal Justice a Victims/Offenders Reconciliation service which is available to victims but, curiously, not available to offenders. Victims of crime can initiate dialogue with the offender, but the offender may not initiate dialogue with the victim. I have written numerous letters to this department and the answers I receive demonstrate that they are not much interested in contacting the 'survivors' of my crime. Even if those people had a desire to contact me, because I am sure if I were in their position I would have questions which were not answered during the trial, they would not be permitted to contact me without prior approval of the office of Victim/Offender Reconciliation. The problem with this is manifold. Not the greatest of which assumes the correctness of presuming that a victim should be put in the position of seeking an apology or reconciliation.
As I have demonstrated, I desperately need to allow the families of my victims an opportunity to confront me. My feelings for this are not personal nor selfishly motivated. I could derive no profit from this. My feelings for this desire is based on an overwhelming sense of compassion. I knew the family of one of the people I killed. I did not know the family of the other person. The trial against me was conducted with the sole intent of not only convicting me for capital murder, but ensuring that I be murdered as well. This procedure does not allow or permit human compassion to impede "justice." The human element is removed. The families of the victims are not only dissuaded from contact with the defendant, they are prohibited from contact with the defendant. The questions asked of the witnesses are academically designed to support the theories of the prosecution and the theories of the defense. Every aspect of the trial is structured and regimented to procedure and the most respectful decorum and deference to the system, not the surviving family members or victims of homicide.
Any deviation from that tradition is prohibited and coercively eliminated. Even though I do not know fully what happened during the killing I perpetrated because I too was shot through the brain, I do not perceive and I should not be perceived as the victim in this circumstance. Nevertheless, I do have a burning compassion for the families because I know that one of the hardest things in life to deal with is the loss of a family member; whether it be your child or your father, mother, brother or sister. When that happens, even if the cause be accidental, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, we shall live for the remainder of our lives wondering why. How? How could that possibly have happened? Even though psychologists advance the idea that grief is experienced in stages and that the 'first stage' is denial, we never get passed it.
To the extent that one might progress through the incapacitation of denial to a mindset of active questioning, gathering information which will help us recover and begin to make sense of our lives is nearly consuming. Even if we rationally acknowledge that we will probably never come to terms and make sense of the events, our hearts nonetheless relive those questions over and over and over. The heart incessantly questions what the mind relegates to existentialism. So long as I remain alive I know those people will have questions which they believe might only be answered by me. However, because of the rules imposed by the Texas prison system, I am not permitted to attempt contact with them. Because every capital case remains 'on appeal' until it is overturned or the defendant is murdered, the victims families are expressly dissuaded from contacting the offender for fear that this might in some way jeopardize the state's defense.
The point I am trying to make is that I am frustrated from properly and correctly addressing my apology and remorse to the people I feel strongly probably wish to know that I have at least made the attempt. It is more than unfortunate that no matter what I do, no matter what I say, those of you who have an overly cynical attitude will always find a way to make reality conform to your imagination and you will always find some rationalized fault with me so that it will support your anger, fear, prejudice and ignorance. It might be okay to judge me, but I caution you to condemn only that which you believe to know most about, and that's yourself.
Having been 'terribly wronged by the system' I'll try to clarify my position. Firstly, the system of justice which calls for the death of the offender is wrong and cannot be made right. The only way to make it seem right is if you are more of a hypocrite than not. If you are a hypocrite then you're also terribly cynical. At any rate, to the extent that I might come across as seeming to feel that I am a victim I attribute to being in a position of not only actively defending my fright to life, but in doing so having to expose that the injudicious, biased and veiled competition of a capital murder trial is manufactured by design.
When someone is killed is it always murder? To the layman, the answer at first blush is usually yes. That might be an a priori-based assumption. The fair standard rule of law dictates that a person is innocent until proven guilty. In criminal prosecution, as the potential forfeiture increases, the level standard of proof increases from guilt by preponderance of the evidence to guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. What do we mean by 'reasonable?' How can the law respond? Is there a limit beyond which lawyers cannot rely on the legal process and must try to expose the truth? These are frightening and tragic questions. More frightening and tragic still is the realization that there are no answers, that the law is a poor system to use to protect victims, and that truth can be manipulated by evil against virtue. In the end, truth is more elusive and manipulable in the search for justice. A deficient as the law is, is it the best we can do? Although we must be vigilant in assessing whether the system is good enough. If capital law were a settled issue then why are there numerous variations of it? Why are exceptions made to the rules of evidence in a capital case which are not made in a non-capital case? Why are the exceptions overwhelmingly in favor of the state and not the defendant? Why are the egregious violations of the Constitution and Bill of Rights written into the law to benefit the state and not the citizens? The U.S. Constitution and the Amendments to the constitution were specifically written and amended to protect the citizens from the state's indefatigable superiority of power and abuse of authority. Why are not all murders punishable by death; why is a capital murder prosecution conducted as an "all or nothing, winner takes all" competition when in fact there can be no winners?
When someone is killed, is it always murder? No. Not always. The term 'murder' is a legal word with a legal definition. However, when someone is accused of murder they are presumed to have at least participated in some element of a murder and the theoretical presumption of innocence is sacrificed in favor of the state's presumption of correctness and accuracy. This is non-assumptive a posteriori. This is the crux of the system. This is the institution of criminal justice. And any institution, any technology of justice, will contain frailties and imperfections. Yet the clear, obvious cases of injustice cannot be used as the standard against which to measure such institutions. We cannot always revert to those most extreme cases of horror as justification for blanket policies of unfairness within the law or the systems which presume to support the rule of law.
I have not been specific with my case because I do not see myself as a victim. However, by virtue of defending myself from being murdered by the state there are manifestations of a defensive attitude I must adopt as a course of self-preservation. I have been defending myself from this position for 15 years. I have learned much treachery from having been subjected to treachery. Do I indict the law, the legislators who drafted the law, the politician prosecutors who serve themselves and not the law, the lower-level judges who regulate the law, the upper-level Justices who manipulate the positivist aspects of the language of the law; do I indict the jurors for not knowing the law? Do I indict the system which allows prison guards virtually unlimited authority to abuse, degrade, dehumanize, disrespect my person and subject me to her personal sense of retribution? Or do I indict that particular prison guard? Do I have a right? Do I have any right? I do not refer to entitlements. I am talking about human rights. Please keep in mind that the punishment assessed by the court as delivered by the jury in my trial was death my lethal injection. It says nothing about various and sundry punishments to be experienced until that time that I am to be murdered.
The idea of human rights consist of two part: The premise or claim that every human being is sacred (inviolable, etc.), and the further claim that because every human being is sacred, certain choices should be made and certain other choices rejected; in particular, certain things ought not be done to any human being and certain things ought to be done to every human being. It is given that in some cases the 'should,' 'ought,' or 'ought not,' might be conditional rather than unconditional or absolute. But when there is doubt, when the job of prison guard requires only that order and security be maintained and the prisoner be kept from harming others and , to the extent possible, himself; when the duty of the prison guard is primarily that of ensuring the prisoner follow the rules of the prison and to maintain custody of that prisoner, that does not extend to personalized brutality or selective enforcement of those rules. To the extent that the system allows for such abuses, to the extent that I have not only witnessed the infliction of abuses against others but have myself been subjected to and yes, victimized by such abuses, I will continue to write and expose and indict from a personal perspective how the system might be viable in theory but it does not take into consideration the substantial differentiation between a person being sent to prison as punishment and a method of deterrence for future consideration, and being delivered and held in prison until the actual 'punishment' is executed.
"A trial isn't a search for the truth; it's a contest to determine the winner."
When you lose in the trial for the right to your own life, what else do you sacrifice until that time that your own life ceases? And we are no longer natural born members of the human family? Is it not enough for you to simply kill me?
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