Category Archives: crime

A religious experience, not a crime

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We’re going to wade into the murky waters of religion and politics today in search of reason and logic.

We’ve had some time to mentally chew on Representative Tila Hubrecht’s thought in the waning days of the legislative session that a pregnancy resulting from a rape is a “silver lining” from God. All kinds of liberal thinkers and organizations have jumped all over her assertion made during House debate on the bill saying a woman’s egg is a person just a soon as a man’s sperm hits it even if the circumstances leading to the presence of the sperm are violent. The bill passed the House but didn’t have enough time to cause trouble in the Senate before adjournment.

The personhood bill did not contain the usual exemptions that allow abortions in cases of rape, incest, or to protect the life of the woman. “It’s not up to us to say, ‘No, just because there was a rape, they cannot exist,’” Rep. Hubrecht said, the “they” referring to a person created by the sperm and egg. “Sometimes bad things happen—and they’re horrible things, but sometimes God can give us a silver lining through the birth of a child.” And she added, “When God gives life, he does so because there’s a reason, no matter what. I’ve met and talked with the different people who have been conceived by rape. There is a reason for their life.” We were not there when she said those things so we don’t know if she gave examples of the reasons for those lives.

She apparently is not alone in her feelings in the Missouri legislature and elsewhere. The Charleston Gazette in West Virginia reported about the same time that Delegate (that’s what they call Representatives in West Virginia) Brian Kurcaba said during a committee hearing, “Obviously rape is awful. What is beautiful is the child that could come from this.”

In Indiana, U. S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock said in 2012, “I think that even when life begins in the horrible situation of rape, that is something that God intended to happen.” Mourdock lost his race.

All three of these folks might be surprised to consider what they are really saying. If God intended pregnancy to occur, GOD IS INVOLVED IN FAMILY PLANNING! And we pretty well know what these folks think of organizations and individuals offering family planning advice.

Of course, all of this discussion is pointless because Congressman Todd Akin assured us during his Senate bid four years ago that a woman’s body can “shut the whole thing down” in cases of “legitimate rape.” He argued, as Rep. Hubrecht has argued, that the punishment should be of the rapist, not of the fetus. The Akin theory, however, seems to indicate pregnancy can only occur during illegitimate rape, whatever that is.

Not long after Hubrecht’s comments, Octavio Chorino and Peter Greenspan offered an op-ed piece in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch agreeing with Hubrecht and the others that “violence against women is unacceptable.” But they found the “notion that good may come of such a violation to be dangerous at best…and any suggestion that there is a bright side to sexual violence is an offense to all survivors.”

They noted other consequences of rape including transmission of sexually transmitted diseases as well as extensive physical and psychological injuries that can affect a woman for the rest of her life. “These consequences are very real and they should not be diminished by the claim that any rape has a silver lining,” they wrote. Unlike Hubrecht, Kurcaba, Mourdock, and Akin, these professionals have had real-world experience with rape and incest victims. “Exposing sexual assault victims to the risks inherent in pregnancy and childbirth is effectively punishing her for her own assault. This is unacceptable,” they said.

Chorino is the president of the Missouri Section Advisory Committee of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Greenspan, also a doctor, is the group’s legislative chair. But what do they know? They didn’t even address the issue of God’s will and Rep. Hubrecht’s inclusion of that issue takes the debate beyond the practical issues on which Chorino and Greenspan based their article.

Their experiences and their observations are not likely to concern the “silver lining” believers anyway.   We have seen no indication that those who want Missouri to have the strongest anti-abortion standards in the nation care much about the second life involved—that of the rape or incest victim.   They certainly didn’t show it during debate on the personhood bill in this election session of the legislature.

The comments, “When God gives life, he does so because there’s a reason, no matter what” and “sometimes God can give us a silver lining through the birth of a child” began to percolate in our head on a recent trip. You know how the mind sometimes looks for something to wonder about other than the many miles yet to go. In this case the mind decided to test the validity of an idea by taking it on a logical line and then asked a simple question:

“If God has a reason for causing a pregnancy through a man’s sexual act with an unwilling woman because ‘when God gives life there’s a reason no matter what,’ why should the man face a criminal charge for what logically is an act of God?”

Then the mind went on. “When does God decide a pregnancy should result from the rape or incest? While the act is in progress? Or does God decide immediately after the event that this is an opportunity to create a life? Or—-

“If God has a reason for a rape or incest-caused pregnancy, does it not follow that God had a reason for the rape or incest?

“If God gives life, and does so because there’s a reason, no matter what, what is that reason? Is it punishment for something the woman or the young girl did that was wrong in God’s eyes? Or, conversely, is it some kind of reward for doing something good such as allowing oneself to be a rape or incest victim, or is it a reward for the rapist or the person committing the incest?

“How can a God-blessed result occur except through a God-inspired act?”

The driver, not being a Biblical scholar, could not cite any examples from the Bible of a God-inspired result that did not begin with a God-inspired or directed act so he did not reply.

“But,” said the mind, “Don’t supporters of the position need to provide a definitive logical answer that does not limit an omnipotent God? If God has the power to create physical life, does not God have to ordain the circumstances under which that life is physically created?

“And doesn’t God have to ordain the circumstances under which the life is physically created because the life would not be created without that violent act?

“And if that is the case, isn’t the argument severely weakened that the perpetrator of the act should be punished rather than the life created being ‘punished’ because, as she said, ‘There is a reason for their life?’ Are not the perpetrator and the new life equal partners in this process and therefore equally blameless?

“In a climate that argues that religious freedom needs more protection, how can it be logically argued that an act, even a violent one, that is motivated by God’s decision to begin a new life no matter what should not be recognized as a religious act, not a criminal act?

“Is rape or incest that creates a life, for which God has a reason no matter what, therefore an act of God?

“And further, should not the woman logically forgive her rapist or her incestuous relative because her STD and her physical and psychological injuries were necessary to create the pregnancy God had a reason to create under these circumstances no matter what?”

And the driver finally responded to his mind out loud, “Your arguments are interesting. But they are flawed because you use the word, ‘logically.’ And logic seems to be the farthest thing from the thinking of those who support the ‘silver lining’ concept.”

And the driver tuned the radio to the old-time radio channel that was re-broadcasting a 1951 Jack Benny show and both of them drove on.

 

Killing death

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We’ve gotten emails from a conservative group proudly announcing that the conservatives appear to have realized the death penalty needs reassessment.

It’s interesting that there is a certain amount of chest-thumping about this discovery because until now the conservative majority in the Missouri legislature has turned up its collective nose at any proposal by Democrats to study the issue or to just repeal the death penalty.

You can ask Senate minority leader Joseph Keaveny about the seemingly sudden shift. He has tried to get legislation approved to study the issue for several years but has been rebuffed repeatedly.

Be that as it may, Senator Paul Wieland’s bill to repeal the death penalty has cleared a Senate committee and is going to the full senate for debate with a committee recommendation that the Senate approve the bill. Wieland’s latest press release squarely addresses an issue that critics say the pro-life forces have sidestepped for years—at least in the eyes of death penalty opponents. “I am a devout Catholic,” says Wieland in his release, “and I believe if I’m going to be pro-life, I should be so on both ends of the spectrum—from conception to natural death.”

No one will be watching this bill more than Earl M. Forrest.

The state Supreme Court has set a May 11 execution date for him because back in 2002 he got into an argument with a woman about her purchase of a mobile home and a lawn mower from him. He killed her and a man who was at her home, took $25,000 worth me meth and went to his home. When law enforcement officers showed up, he got into a shootout with them and killed a Dent County deputy sheriff and wounded the county sheriff. Forrest was wounded. He’s now 66 years old. The U. S. Supreme Court has refused to review his case and all of his state and federal appeals otherwise appear to have run out. The legislature is to adjourn two days after his scheduled execution so there is some urgency to deal with Wieland’s bill.

Lloyd Leo Anderson, the last man to be executed by lethal gas in Missouri, was in a position similar to that of Forrest. After Anderson’s appeals ran out, St. Louis Representative Jay Howard introduced a bill to end capital punishment. Governor Warren Hearnes stayed Anderson’s execution until the legislature decided the issue. When the legislature killed Howard’s bill, Hearnes lifted the stay and Anderson was gassed on January 26, 1965. But not before some angry last words: “Tell them I didn’t get a fair trial. Tell Hearnes to kiss my ___ ass. The same to the rest of you guys,” apparently referring to the large number of witnesses that crowded around the gas chamber, peering through windows to watch him die minutes later.

Missouri executed eighteen men between November, 2013 and September 1, 2015 when I watched Roderick Nunley die quietly for the kidnap, rape, and murder of a fifteen-year old Kansas City school girl a quarter century earlier. He was the eighty-sixth Missouri inmate executed by drugs. The first drug-induced execution was that of George Mercer January 6, 1989—in the gas chamber at the old penitentiary. No new execution facilities were available then.

There are twenty-seven men left under a death sentence in Missouri. No one has been sentenced to death in the last two years, mostly because of plea bargains—as we understand the situation.

Wieland’s bill says anyone sentenced to death by the time his bill would become law on August 28 would be re-sentenced to life without parole. At least twenty men who had been sentenced to death already have been re-sentenced to life without parole after further re-evaluation of their cases. Two men, Robert Driscoll and Joseph Amrine, have been released after their death sentences were overturned. One has been declared mentally incompetent to be executed although he’s still under a death penalty.

Your correspondent has watched more than twenty men die on a gurney from lethal injection. After several of those executions, relatives of the victims have spoken with reporters in a prison press room. No one has ever indicated any regret about the inmate’s ultimate fate. And in the last few times, they have expressed resentment at a system that has taken so long to put a killer away. More than once they have complained about the cruel and unusual punishment that the system has inflicted on the survivors of the victims. We wonder how the families of the victims of the twenty-seven men under a death sentence feel about Wieland’s bill.

Missouri has repealed the death penalty before. It did it in 1917 only to have the legislature reinstate it in 1919 when sponsors spoke of a marked increase in murders since the repeal. It was repealed again after Anderson’s 1965 gassing and a U. S. Supreme Court ruling in 1972 that gassing was cruel and unusual punishment. That let every inmate in America under a death sentence be re-sentenced to life. The U. S. Supreme Court ruled in 1976 that a new system of executions was not cruel and unusual punishment, leading Missouri to reinstitute the penalty in 1977. The legislature changed the law allowing executions by gas or lethal injection in 1988 with lethal injection the preferred means.

So now, it appears, conservatives seem to be deciding that liberals might have had a good idea after all. Is this just the start of a new cycle of thinking or has society forever changed on this issue? Is there nobody whose crime is so abhorrent that the forfeiture of life is the only just punishment? Is life in prison with no hope of ever getting out the worst possible penalty?

Consider part of the last statement of David Zink before his execution July 14, 2015:

“For those who remain on death row, understand that everyone is going to die. Statistically speaking, we have a much easier death than most, so I encourage you to embrace it and celebrate our true liberation before society figures it out and condemns us to life without parole and we too will die a lingering death.”