John Allen Mohammed was killed by the State of Virginia tonight. He received a lethal injection at 9:06 and was declared dead at 9:11.
I don’t have anything against the death penalty. I realized that nineteen years ago on a visit to Auschwitz. In front of a killing chamber where Jews and other victims were gassed during the war, and in sight of the gates where you can still read the inscription that “Arbeit Macht Frei,” that work makes one free, Rudolf Hoess, wartime commandant of the extermination camp, was hanged. It was 1947; he was 46 years old when he died.
As I read the marker and looked at the site, I didn’t feel the tiniest quiver of sadness that he was hanged. It was the right thing, the only thing to do. There was no other statement that humanity could make about what this man did than to try him and kill him.
Ever since then my personal struggles about capital punishment have had nothing to do with the question of principle. It’s all a question of circumstance: when is this penalty justified, and how fair is the system that decides who must die.
We haven’t always gotten that right in this country. In the seventh grade in the North Carolina public schools, we had a required year of instruction in North Carolina history. Among other things we learned about the state’s oddly defensive state song: “Carolina, Carolina, Heaven’s blessing attend thee;/While I live I shall cherish, protect and defend thee./Though scorners may sneer at, and witlings defame her,/Still our hearts sound with gladness whenever we name her.”
At least, that’s how I remember it. I wasn’t sure what a ‘witling’ was and it seemed, even then, to be a bad idea to give them and the scorners the free publicity.
We also learned other fun North Carolina facts; the names and county seats of the 100 counties — and the four capital crimes in the state. These were murder, arson, rape, and treason against the State of North Carolina.
That last one really puzzled me; it still does. It was a little unsettling that there was a capital crime that I did not understand. Could you commit it by accident?
I was not greatly relieved to learn later on that John Brown was convicted and hanged in 1859 of treason against the State of Virginia.
Virginia was on somewhat firmer ground, I think, with John Allen Mohammed. The crime was of extraordinary gravity; the element of premeditation was clear. He used deceit and emotional blackmail to engage the teenaged Lee Boyd Malvo in his coast to coast murder spree.
Even so, I don’t feel the quiet satisfaction with this execution that I felt when I learned of the death of Rudolf Hoess. Robert Myers, the brother of one of the victims (Dean Myers) witnessed the execution and comes close to expressing how I feel.
The London Times quotes him as saying that the execution was “probably a point of closure.” Mr. Myers went on to say, however, “But that was pretty much overcome just by the sadness that the whole situation generates in my heart. That he [Muhammed] would get to the place where he did what he did and it had to come to this.”
In the face of situations like this, one feels driven to acknowledge the power and mystery of life, of the human spirit, and of our Creator. The sheer evil and cruelty of the crime, the wasted lives, the wrenching of the lives of the victims’ family and friends out of their natural course: what punishment is too great for this? And if Muhammed’s death can bring comfort and closure to these victims, who can deny them the basic human right of justice? The law was made for this.
At the same time, I can’t quite forget John Allen Mohammed and Lee Boyd Malvo, also made in the image of God, also among those for whose sake, we Christians believe, God himself was willing to lay down his life. Down what dark, terrifying paths did Mohammed walk on his long journey toward prison and death? In what lonesome wastes was his spirit broken, scattered and reforged into the monstrous, cold and callous will that planned and carried out these crimes? What will John Allen Mohammed and his Creator say to one another when they meet?