Have mercy

TIME IS ticking away. Faster for some of us. We the People won’t kill Jack Greene tonight, thanks to the courts. But the state might kill him later this year, or next, in our name. If the courts don’t make the latest stay permanent.

This is one of those cases—yes, one of many such cases—in which the crime of the excused wasn’t in doubt. According to the papers, Jack Greene has talked freely of his guilt in two murders in the early 1990s. He told a clemency hearing as much last month. Along with his conspiracy theory that his lawyers are keeping him from going to a North Carolina jail. While he shoves tissues in his ears and nose to alleviate delusional injuries. There are reasons why he eats his solitary meals from a sink in his cell, but to try to explain those reasons wouldn’t elevate any argument in the case.

Maybe this time the story isn’t about Jack Greene, but about the rest of us. That is, the state. Do we really want the government taking this man’s life, or any man’s life, in our name?

The answer to that question, for some, is: You bet.

Others see the matter with more complicated legal and moral questions to answer.

The death penalty, it is said, provides the ultimate punishment. It also provides one heck of a conundrum. How can we on the one hand demand our betters Choose Life in our name, then on the other pressure them to choose death, also in our name? Why not just end this nigh-forever death watch month after month, year after year, and remove this stain on the state’s conscience? And just end the death penalty. Make the Jack Greenes of the world eat from his sink until another Power removes him from his misery.

Then all these cases would finally be closed instead of continuing them forever. Lest we forget, mercy is justice, too. And can also provide closure for those looking for it.