TheDarkMan
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
The United States has executed a grand total of 18 people this year, all of them men. The last was Thomas Edwin Loden on December 14. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, two more were scheduled for this month, but both have been postponed and it appears unlikely they will ever be executed.
All those executed this year died by lethal injection, which has been the preferred method for some time. Whatever one thinks about the death penalty, it is disgraceful not that so few executions are carried out but that so many of those convicted linger on death row for so long that they die from natural causes. It didn’t used to be like this. In January 1920, Jesse Watts murdered Dr D. S. Alverson; the following month he was indicted by a grand jury and convicted in late March. Watts was due to be executed on May 15 but escaped from Warren County Jail with nine other prisoners on May 12, yet in spite of this delay, after his recapture he was hanged on April 15, 1921. Why did the State of Mississippi take fifteen months to execute a murderer in 1921 but over twenty years in the Twenty-First Century?
The murder Thomas Loden committed was particularly heinous. On June 22, 2000, he kidnapped a 16 year old girl, raped her multiple times and videoed part of his acts. Then he suffocated and strangled her to death. Indicted for capital murder, he waived his right to a jury trial, pleading guilty, and apologised for his crimes. (A jury isn’t necessary when an accused pleads guilty, but in capital cases, a jury will decide the punishment).
It is clear from Loden’s subsequent actions that he wasn’t right in the head, but should that excuse or mitigate a crime of this nature?
Loden was executed at the Mississippi State Penitentiary after a last meal of pork chops, fried okra, baked sweet potato with butter, Pillsbury Grands biscuits with butter and molasses, peach cobbler with French vanilla ice cream and Lipton sweet tea.
One person who was happy to see him eat it was Wanda Farris, the mother of his victim.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
RE: “All those executed this year died by lethal injection,”
Are you including the Covid 19 Death Jabs? I understand they were all convicted of excessive breathing.