Apparently, though hopefully not on a whim, the condemned man chose firing squad over lethal injection as the way he will die. But, die he will after spending most of his life in prison, including incarceration as a juvenile. The third District Judge Robin Reese signed the warrant, saying, “The defendant has exhausted all his legal remedies,” and “It’s my conclusion not to second-guess the courts or undertake an independent review.”

So, let’s think about this: A child ends up in juvenile hall, troubled and in trouble, and there is little or no intervention to try to help that young person turn his or her life around. Just doing time, without mental/emotional encouragement, has no record of changing the criminal behavior, and there is ample documentation that the death penalty, whether it’s by lethal injection, electric chair, firing squad, or stoning, has ever been a deterrent to murder. What the death penalty does, instead, is bloody the hands of our entire country.

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