What I Learned From Executing Two Men
As superintendent of the Oregon State Penitentiary, I planned and carried out that state’s only two executions in the last 54 years. I used to support the death penalty. I don’t anymore.
I was born and raised in the segregated South. I was 13 when Emmett Till was lynched for “flirting” with a white woman. I can remember upstanding black Christians expressing hope that his murderers would be caught and hanged. It seemed quite reasonable to me then that death was the only proportionate response for people who would so egregiously violate the norms of a society.
Years later, as a young law enforcement officer, I lost a close friend, John Tillman Hussey, and a cousin, Louis Perry Bryant — both law enforcement officers themselves — to execution-style murders at the hands of felons who were attempting to avoid arrest.… Seguir leyendo »