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ACCORDING TO LIZ - With all the killings in Israel and Gaza, with the shocking murder spree in Maine, it’s hard to find the bandwidth to address yet another pervasive evil that besets America – that of deliberate execution of some of its incarcerated citizens, disproportionately men of color.
Very often individual deaths strike harder because they have faces and advocates. The victims of Hamas have been identified and their names and faces spread around the world. What about the thousands of children, hundreds of doctors massacred in both revenge and an attempt to bomb the needle in the haystack?
Those on Death Row have often languished for years with few who remember their names and fewer still to act as their advocates.
The grimness of the Hamas murders is in its deliberateness, the planning and execution. But is it any worse than the missiles rained down on a defenseless people, and the blockading of basic supplies so there is no food and water or fuel?
All of it planned and all of it, whether perpetrated by Hamas or the current Israeli government, pure evil. And just as gruesome as many of the murders that earned their perpetrators a death sentence.
Overseas, the United States must stop fomenting terrorism by trying to impose its worldview on others, and bullying those who disagree. Our leadership needs to learn how to play nice and respect those who make different choices.
And here at home, we must forego the barbaric practice of executions, long abandoned by other civilized nations.
Commutation of Speer’s sentence should have been a moral imperative.
But the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles unanimously denied clemency to Houston native and two-time killer Will Speer on Tuesday, despite vociferous opposition by thousands to his execution. He was slated to be murdered today, on October 26th, but received a temporary reprieve from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals less than five hours before he was slated to be executed.
Murdered by lethal injection which, time after time, has been shown to be a cruel and unusual punishment. Especially when the executioners are unskilled and use outdated drugs.
Without elaborating on their reasons, the Appeals Court justices have left his execution “pending further order of the court” which gives Speer a minimum of 90 more days on this Earth where he can continue to make a difference for staff and other inmates.
Hopefully, compassion will prevail and the stay will be converted to life in prison without possibility of parole.
Not because he was physically abused by his father and stepfather, not because he suffered from learning disabilities and was bullied as a boy, not because he was sexually abused, not because prosecutors withheld evidence and presented false testimony, and not because of his newfound relationship with God.
But because he is a human being. And this country needs more humanity and less violence.
What benefit would his murder serve? Two wrongs have never made a right.
The one overriding imperative every human has is to be wanted by others.
And Speer’s life was a spiral of violence and rejection.
Both murders Speer committed were at the behest of others – to gain their approval.
In 1991, at the age of 16, Speer murdered a friend’s father trying to protect his friend from abuse. He was thrown in jail, tried as an adult and sentenced to life in prison.
While incarcerated, he was a constant target of prison violence.
In 1997, with another inmate and under the direction of a prison gang Speer strangled another convict. Again he took the fall and was sent to Death Row.
It’s been over two decades.
During that time Speer came to acknowledge that his circumstances were the result of his own poor choices and bad decisions. Due to his clean disciplinary record, in 2021 he was selected to participate in a faith-based program helping prisoners in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to repent their crimes and seek forgiveness through God.
The sister of the man he murdered in prison is one of many who have called for clemency for Speer. She and her brother were also victims of dysfunctional families. But even the least among us can be of service to others.
The state and federal courts, the judges and the hanging juries, the governors who won’t pardon, the vindictive citizenry who demand blood – all have as much if not more to answer for than those they consign to Death Row and then dispassionately murder.
The dehumanizing of the “other” to assuage guilt, which has grown exponentially in the wake of the MAGA-spawned vitriol, should not be allowed to wash away the milk of hope, charity and love.
Along with the shooter in Lewiston, along with the Hamas terrorists, shouldn’t those who authorized the hail of missiles murdering and maiming innocent children in Gaza also be condemned?
And, once their ability to hurt has been rendered toothless, be forgiven as well?
EVERY life is worth saving.
(Liz Amsden is a contributor to CityWatch and an activist from Northeast Los Angeles with opinions on much of what goes on in our lives. She has written extensively on the City's budget and services as well as her many other interests and passions. In her real life she works on budgets for film and television where fiction can rarely be as strange as the truth of living in today's world.
